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Outlook: Medic on the Frontline Against IS

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Khanza Ali

04/02/2016 GMT

Medic on the Frontline Against IS

BBC World Service - Outlook, Medic on the Frontline Against IS

Khanza Ali risks her life to help injured Peshmerga fighters and Yazidi refugees

Khanza Ali is treating hundreds of Yazidi refugees on Mount Sinjar in Iraq. She also goes to the frontline to help injured Peshmerga fighters.

Khanza Ali says she is the only full-time medic working on Mount Sinjar in Iraq. In 2014, thousands of Yazidi people fled up the mountain after being attacked by fighters from the so called Islamic State. Around 9,000 displaced people still live there. When Khanza, a Syrian Kurd, heard of their plight, she was determined to help. She trained as a medic with the Kurdistan Democratic Party and, since September of last year, has been working in the area - which some call the 'Mountain of Death'. Khanza spends her days caring for refugees and also Peshmerga fighters injured in ongoing battles against IS.

The English singer-songwriter Elvis Costello was a star of the post punk British music scene from the 1970s into the 1980s. His first three albums all appeared on Rolling Stone Magazine's list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, with hits like Pump it up, Watching The Detectives  and Oliver's Army. Now he has written a  memoir, Don't Start Me Talking, about his 40 years in music and how he first followed his father, the jazz musician and band leader Ross MacManus, into the business.

Fejze is a Kosovan man who has learnt to live with the terrible trauma he suffered as a teenager. He was 14 in 1998 when his father, two of his uncles and his 20-year-old brother were taken from their house and shot dead in front of him. Fejze says he was only saved because his father had pleaded for his life before being killed. After the shootings Fejze ran off into the woods, returning two days later. 'I lost myself' he said simply. Lynne Jones was a child psychologist working in Kosovo at the time. She first met Fejze three months after the massacre. 

A team of explorers have just completed a gruelling 800-mile trek across the 'Empty Quarter' in the Arabian Peninsula. It is the largest sand desert on the planet, and one of the least hospitable places on earth. They were attempting to replicate the pioneering journey of the British adventurer Bertram Thomas and his Omani guide in 1930. I spoke to the team from the Qatari capital Doha on the day they finished their journey: Mohammed al-Zadjali and Amour al-Wahaibi from Oman, and expedition leader Mark Evans from the UK.

(Photo: Khanza Ali. Credit: Tom Robinson)

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