Inside a Yazidi refugee camp in Iraq

While filming Fault Lines' latest episode, “Iraq Divided: The Fight Against ISIL,” correspondent Josh Rushing spent more than two weeks traveling along the border of northern Iraq to see how the battle against the Islamic State was affecting the country’s various cultural groups. (The film airs Saturday, October 18, at 7 pm Eastern time/4 pm Pacific on Al Jazeera America.)

Along the way, he came across a refugee camp called filled with hundreds of Yazidis, a religious minority group. The settlement, known as Khanki, is located in a province just north of Iraq’s second largest city, Mosul. Tens of thousands of Yazidis were run out of their homes by ISIL, and about 6,000 have ended up living in squalor and being battered by oppressive heat at Khanki.

Rushing documented what he saw while visiting the camp, taking beautiful photos that show how arduous life at Khanki is. As he was there, the Yazidis performed a touching, tragic ceremony that illustrates the cost of the instability caused by ISIL.

What follows is Rushing’s account: