Fighting ISIL: Thousands flee their hometown

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Fights against ISIL's final hold-out in Syria have seen thousands of people displaced. CGTN's Guy Henderson has visited Iraq's Dohuk governorate, a place 50-kilometers from the Syria-Iraq border, people there have told their sufferings and lost.

It began on Sunday. Its night fell. ISIL again held on. ISIL's loyal last few were still frustrating the advance.

Thousands of its fighters and their families used a weeklong lull to flee. They're now detained in Syrian camps.

And victims have emerged too: like 14-year-old Yazidi Khashman Sajar - reunited last week with his uncle, aunt and cousins back in Iraq.

Little has emerged about his years of enslavement. With the trauma so raw, we do not ask. Khashman's parents are still missing.

NABRAS YOUSIF KHASHMAN DISPLACED YAZIDI PERSON "My eyes were looking for God's blessing that we may see them all again one day. I always had hoped in God that they might be alive and come back one day."

This is still not home - that's been destroyed. It's an Iraqi displaced persons camp filled with thousands of Yazidis who fled here, hunted by ISIL.

Everyone has lost someone. These plaques will honor the many dead.

Scores of recent returnees are bringing hope. This man shows us a video he believes comes from the frontline. "That's my cousin," he says, "He looks injured."

Getting the victims out, though, is not the only challenge.

GUY HENDERSON DUHOK, IRAQ "We met another boy in this Iraqi camp who'd just escaped ISIL. He was just 10 years old. We decided not to film with him but for much of our brief encounter, he sat there in silence, staring at the floor, his hands clasped tightly together, rocking gently back and forth. This was a boy clearly in need of urgent psychological help."

This center helps rescue Yazidis and then treat them. Its director says the boys we met probably won't get the kind of care they need.

HUSSEIN AL-QAIDY OFFICE FOR MISSING & KIDNAPPED YAZIDIS, DUHOK

"We have opened a health center in coordination with the Duhok health directorate that treats girls and women. But we don't have anything to help the kids."

They survived ISIL's targeted terror and years of hell on earth. Now they live with scars that may never heal. GH, CGTN, Duhok, Iraq.