The PKK continues to kidnap Yazidi Kurdish children and has so far abducted more than 100 children, and people continue to come to us and demand the release of their children, a spokesman for the Yezidi House in Sinjar said.

The U.S. State Department has said in its annual report that "the PKK and People’s Protection Units (YPG) operating in the IKR and Sinjar continued to recruit and use children. In 2021, an unverified source reported that the PKK recruited dozens of children to prepare them for combat, including children from Kirkuk, Iraq."

"NGO and local government contacts confirmed that hundreds of Yezidi children have been recruited by the PKK-aligned Yezidi Civil Protection Units (YPS) and other PKK-affiliated militias. In 2018, civil society organizations reported the PKK recruited and trained children from Sinjar, Makhmour, and other locations, and sent them to bases in Sinjar, Turkey, and the Qandil Mountains between Iraq and Iran," According to the report.

“A while ago, the Americans came to us in Sinjar and visited all the homes whose children were kidnapped. Since the PKK kidnapped many children - what we know they kidnapped more than 100 children - the families of the kidnapped continue to claim the fate of their children.” Saadoun Zaro, a spokesman for the Yazidi House in Sinjar, told the KDP's official website.

Other regional countries on the US State Department's list included Afghanistan, Iran, Libya, Syria and Turkey, which were added for the first time.

The Kurdistan Regional Government has previously accused the PKK of hiding among the population and villages, using the local population as human shields during its battles with Turkey.