A/HRC/33/55 Women and girls whose fighter-husbands have died are pressured by ISIL to marry another fighter quickly because it would be risky to resist the group’s entreaties. 110. Thousands of Yazidi women and girls, some as young as 9 years old, are sold in slave markets in the governorates of Raqqah, Aleppo, Homs, Hasakah and Dayr az-Zawr. Passed from fighter to fighter as chattel, they endure brutal rapes and are punished with severe beatings and gang rapes when they try to escape. The rape, sexual enslavement and other forms of sexual violence committed by ISIL fighters against Yazidi women and girls held in the Syrian Arab Republic are detailed in the report entitled: “‘They came to destroy’: ISIS crimes against the Yazidis”.4 V. Impact of the conflict on children 111. Syrian children continue to be victims of violations by all warring parties. Continually exposed to unbearable levels of violence, they suffer from ongoing, multiple and frequently untreated trauma. An interviewee described how a 5-year-old became suicidal after seeing maimed bodies while fleeing from Minbij. The lack of suitable health care and adequate food further endangers their lives, while the lack of access to education deprives them of future opportunities. 112. Aerial attacks by pro-Government forces have killed hundreds of children in opposition-held areas. On 11 January, an aerial raid killed at least 11 children between the ages of 6 and 12 in a school in Ain Jara, Aleppo. The next day, an air raid in Sarmada, Idlib, a town under Jabhat al-Nusra’s control, killed three children. 113. Aerial bombardments continued to result in child casualties in May, particularly among communities of internally displaced persons. On 5 May, three children died in the makeshift school in the Kamouna camp for internally displaced persons in Idlib. One interviewee described the victims’ bodies as scorched beyond recognition. On 29 May, government rockets killed two children, aged 7 and 12, while they were playing in the AlSakhour neighbourhood of Aleppo city. 114. ISIL continues to carry out indiscriminate attacks that result in the death of children. A series of attacks in Sayda Zaynab, Damascus, killed dozens of civilians, including a 6month-old baby. Another attack on the Government-controlled towns of Jableh and Tartous killed at least four children. Children as young as 11 years old were killed or maimed by landmines planted by ISIL as it retreated from villages around Kobane and Hasakah cities. Children working in agricultural fields are particularly exposed to this danger. 115. On 12 May, four girls and one 13-year-old boy were killed when Jabhat al-Nusra, Al-Tawhid brigades and Ahrar al-Sham took over Zara village in Hama. Of the 17 persons still missing, 8 are children. Many other children were injured during the attack, including a 4-year-old girl and a 16-year-old boy with Down syndrome. A 15-year-old described how she was shot in the arm while attempting to flee the village with her 6-year-old sister. 116. On the first day of Eid al-Fitr, 6 July, Jaysh al-Fatah rockets in Al-Zahra, Aleppo, killed 3 children, aged 11 and 12. Another 11 children sustained shrapnel wounds; 1 remains in critical condition. 117. Between April and May, Jabhat al-Nusra and Jund al-Aqsa recruited hundreds of children, many under the age of 15, in Idlib, Hama and Aleppo. The recruitment followed campaigns by jihadist ideologues in internally displaced persons camps, mosques and other public spaces. The boys were promised monthly salaries as an incentive for impoverished 4 Available from www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/IICISyria/Pages/Documentation.aspx. 17