Kurdish female militia vows to keep fighting Islamic State

BEIRUT – A Kurdish female militia that took part in freeing the northern Syrian city of Raqqa from the Islamic State group says it will continue the fight to liberate women living under the extremist group's brutal rule.

Nisreen Abdullah of the Women's Protection Units, or YPJ, read a statement Thursday in Raqqa's Paradise Square, where IS fighters once carried out their public killings. She says the all-women force lost 30 members in the four-month battle.

Under Islamic State rule, women were forced to wear all-encompassing veils and could be stoned to death for adultery. Hundreds of women and girls from Iraq's Yazidi minority were captured and forced into sexual slavery.

Abdullah says the YPJ helped liberate dozens of Yazidi women.