A 21-year-old woman who was kidnapped by Islamic State militants in Iraq more than a decade ago has been freed from Gaza in a US-led operation.
This week’s operation also involved Israel, Jordan and Iraq, officials said.
The woman was a member of the Yazidi religious minority, which killed more than 5,000 believers and kidnapped thousands more in a 2014 operation that the United Nations called genocide.
Shirwan Sinjari, chief of staff to Iraq’s foreign minister, said the men were freed after more than four months of efforts, including several attempts that failed due to the deteriorating security situation caused by Israeli military offensives in the Gaza Strip.
She turned out to be Fauzia Sydow. Reuters was unable to contact the woman directly for comment.
Iraqi authorities have been in touch with the woman for several months, passing information on her to U.S. authorities and arranging her escape from Gaza with Israeli help, according to people familiar with the matter.
Authorities have not provided details about how exactly she was released, and Jordanian and U.S. embassy officials in Baghdad did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
David Saranga, Director of Digital Diplomacy at Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, posted on X: “Fauzia, a Yazidi girl kidnapped by ISIS from Iraq and brought to Gaza at just 11 years old, has finally been rescued by Israeli security forces.”
The Israeli military said it had coordinated the operation with the US embassy in Jerusalem and “other international parties.”
Yazidi woman (21) freed from Gaza for first time in over 10 years – video
The group said in a statement that her captor was killed during the Gaza war, possibly in an Israeli military attack, and then fled to a safe house in the Gaza Strip.
A US State Department spokesperson said on Tuesday that the US “assisted the safe evacuation of a young Yazidi woman from Gaza to reunite with her family in Iraq.”
A spokeswoman said the woman was kidnapped from her home in Iraq when she was 11 years old and then sold and trafficked to Gaza. Her captor was recently killed, allowing her to escape and seek repatriation, the spokesperson said.
Sinjari said he was feeling well but traumatized. She was reportedly reunited with her family in northern Iraq.
In 2014, more than 6,000 Yazidis were captured by IS militants in Iraq’s Sinjar region, many of them sold as sex slaves or trained as child soldiers, before being taken across the border to countries such as Turkey and Syria. .
More than 3,500 people have been rescued or released so far, with about 2,600 still missing, according to Iraqi authorities.
