MISRATA, Libya - Awares gazes at the ground. “In my womb I have the son of one of Daesh fighters who raped me,” she says.
The 16-year-old Eritrean teenager is standing inside a small courtyard – 250 metres squared –  imprisoned by a high wall topped with barbed wire. Her hair is covered in a purple veil and she is dressed in a long black jellabiya, a cloth traditionally worn by Libyan women.
She glances over at her 27-year-old friend Audit, also Eritrean. “Thank God I did not get pregnant from them,” Audit says timidly, as she adjusts her bright pink headscarf.
Awares and Audit were “sabaya,” women enslaved and imprisoned by the terrorist group Daesh, whose men routinely raped them.
The women are among the dozens of sabaya who were rescued in the final weeks of war against the self-proclaimed caliphate in Sirte, a small but strategically important coastal town. They are now being held in the prison of the Air Force Academy in Misrata, Libya’s third largest city, which lies 240 kilometres to the north west of Sirte. Affiliated with the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA), Misrata forces led the Banyan Al Marsoos operation to dislodge Daesh from its Libyan stronghold of Sirte, with the pro-government forces finally achieving victory in early December.  
Awares and Audit were squeezed among other Eritrean women whispering on a bench in the middle of the courtyard, while babies were desperately crying. Some 50 women – there are also Libyans, Syrians, Iraqis and Filipinos –  are being detained, along with dozens of children. They are under investigation as the last civilians to have remained with Daesh in Sirte. As for the men, the Libyan forces took a take-no-prisoners approach. Most rank-and-file Daesh male combatants were either killed during the fighting or executed, while the group’s leaders have been transferred to Tripoli.
"Three fighters from Daesh married me. The first one was Sudanese," Awares said. “After a couple of days he handed me over to a comrade who also abused me. The second man died fighting in a few days and I was then taken by a Tunisian man. He is the one who is the father of the child in my womb.”