Isis plants PlayStation boobytraps in Yazidi homes
Islamic State scattered video game controllers set to explode at the push of a button in Yazidi homes as they retreated from northern Iraq, a film about the persecuted minority group’s minesweepers has revealed.
One PlayStation controller would have detonated four bombs and destroyed the house where it was found, in Sinjar district, had a child picked it up and played with it.
Bombs also disguised as other household items are shown in the documentary that follows the tense work of Yazidi minesweepers in Iraq.
Into the Fire follows Hana Khider, a Yazidi woman and team leader from the Mines Advisory Group charity.
“The controller was in a house in Sinjar district and was attached to four large explosive charges placed around the building, enough to completely destroy the house,” Jonathan Caswell, a spokesman for the charity, told The Daily Telegraph.
“Pressure on the controller buttons or joysticks would set them off simultaneously.”
Thousands of Yazidi women were enslaved and raped by Isis fighters at the height of the terrorist group’s power in northern Iraq, while many Yazidi men were killed.
Khider and her team are now undertaking dangerous, painstaking work to deactivate millions of explosive devices that were planted in their communities as a means of spreading fear long after Isis had departed.
“Hundreds of thousands of people remain unable to return to their homes to pick up the pieces of their traumatised lives,” said Portia Stratton, the Iraq director of the charity.
It says its work has assisted 1.9 million people in Iraq since 2014 and has already removed more than 17,000 improvised bombs.
The documentary was released as UN investigators announced they were at a “pivotal moment” in helping the Iraqi authorities deliver justice to the Yazidi community.
In a report to the UN Security Council, investigators said they had gathered a huge cache of evidence including phone records, videos and photos that could be used to prosecute captured Isis fighters.