“Hello, our situation is dire,” a girl’s voice choked with despair. On the other end of the line, Ameena Saeed Hasan showed her the only way to survive: escape from the IS hideout.

Former Iraqi MP Ameena Saeed Hasan. Photo: cathyotten

According to CNN, Ms. Hasan receives such calls every day. A former Iraqi parliamentarian, she has now taken it upon herself to rescue as many Yazidi women as possible.

When IS began to take over the city of Mosul, Ms. Hasan thought the Yazidi tribe in the Sinjar mountains would be safe.

“We were like, ‘What are they doing in Sinjar?’ ” she recalled. “There’s no oil or anything. What are they going to get?”

However, IS fighters have come to Sinjar. There may not be any oil fields, but instead they have taken over the region's most important resource: its people.

IS militants have captured thousands of Yazidi women and children and killed the men. The terrorist group brazenly claims that the Quran gives them permission to capture non-Muslim women and girls and rape them.

The Yazidis, an ethnic minority in Iraq, believe that a god created the earth and entrusted it to peacock angels to guard it. However, they have been widely persecuted by IS because they are accused of devil worship.

The United Nations accuses IS of genocide against the Yazidi people.

Many families with missing people have turned to Ms. Hasan for help.

“People know me,” she explained. “I’m from Sinjar and I’m also Yazidi. I know a lot of people who were kidnapped. Some of them are my relatives, my neighbors, and they called me.”

Together with her husband Khalil, Hasan set up a rescue network for women. She would take the calls and Khalil would make the dangerous journey to the Iraq-Syria border to bring them to safety.

So far, the couple has rescued more than a hundred people. The first case was a 35-year-old woman with six children, all of whom were captured and sold in IS slave markets.

In her desperate call to Ms Hasan, the woman described what happened to them: "They forced people into two big trucks from the village and took them somewhere, I don't know where. While they were taking people, one woman started resisting and they killed her."

Despite her horrific ordeal, the woman was one of the lucky ones as she eventually escaped.

Yazidi girls take shelter in a building in the city of Dohuk, Iraq. Photo: Rex

Many others were not so lucky. Ms Hasan said many women raped and abused by their captors chose to commit suicide rather than wait to be rescued.

“We just want them to be saved,” she said. “Hundreds of girls have committed suicide. I have pictures of some girls who committed suicide when they had no hope of being saved and were repeatedly sold and raped by IS. I think there were about 100. We lost contact with most of them.”

Ms. Hasan was awarded by the US State Department for rescuing IS slaves.

US Secretary of State John Kerry praised her courageous efforts for the Yazidi religious minority in northern Iraq, affirming that the world is concerned about what they face and is committed to helping the victims and saving their lives.

But Mrs Hasan is still haunted by the thought of those she could not save.

“I can’t sleep, I can’t forget what happened to them,” she said. “They say, ‘When are you going to save us?’ But I don’t have an answer. I’m not the government. I’m nothing. I’m just a human being. It’s hard.”

Many have joined the fight against IS. Instead of guns, Hasan’s weapon is her phone. With it, she brings hope to the victims and the promise that help will come.

According to VNE