Iraqi girl reunited with family 3 years after abduction by Islamic State

The Ashti camp in Iraq's northern city of Erbil on Saturday celebrated the return of a girl whose abduction by militants three years ago sent shockwaves through her Christian community.

Joy filled the prefab unit that is now the home of six-year-old Christina Ezzo Obada's family, who were forced to flee the town of Qaraqosh, which lies between Erbil and Mosul and was taken over by the Islamic State (IS) group in mid-2014.

"Seeing my daughter is a miracle," said her 46-year-old mother Aida. "I was shocked because she has changed so much, I didn't recognise her."

They were on a bus with other displaced people when militants took her daughter from her in August 2014.

More than five months after her abduction by IS, Aida heard through acquaintances that her daughter had ended up with a family of 12 in the Tenek neighbourhood of west Mosul.

Iraqi forces retook east Mosul earlier this year and have been battling militants in west Mosul since February.

Christina's mother told AFP that she had been receiving intermittent information about her daughter but had never managed to talk to her directly.

The family with whom Christina lived fled Mosul recently, and the little girl's eldest brother, Elias, received a phone call asking him to pick up his sister from another location in the city.

The family Aida described as having "adopted" Christina told her they found the girl alone and crying near a mosque more than two years ago.

Christina's blind father, Khader Touma, wearing dark glasses, was surrounded by his family, now complete with the return of his youngest daughter.

Her two sisters and two brothers had escaped to Kurdish territory before the arrival of the militants.

"I'm with mum and dad," said Christina, playing with a plastic toy, in their small unit for displaced people.

They may face a long wait in the cramped cabin because their home in Qaraqosh was almost completely destroyed in the fighting to dislodge the militants.

More than 120,000 members of Iraq's dwindling Christian minority had to flee their homes when IS swept through the Nineveh plain east of Mosul in August 2014.

Christina's disappearance had rallied support around the plight of the community, which has yet to return to its towns and villages, most of which were retaken from IS months ago.