CNN —
A 21-year-old Yazidi woman has been rescued from Gaza, where she had been held captive by Hamas for years, after being trafficked by ISIS.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced Thursday that Fauzia Amin Sid was freed this week in an operation coordinated between Israel, the United States, and other international parties.
Fauzia told CNN he returned to Iraq after many years as a prisoner of war.
She said she was first kidnapped by ISIS as a child in August 2014. At that time, ISIS captured the city of Sinjar in Iraq’s northern Nineveh province, executing Yazidi men and boys and committing sexual violence and rape against women and girls. other crimes.
Over the next few years, Fauzia was trafficked to various locations in several countries.
“We ended up in the al-Hol camp (in Syria) before being smuggled into Idlib in 2019, and from there we headed to Turkey. “He arranged for me to get a passport in Turkey,” she said.
She told CNN she spent a year in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, and found life there “unbearable.”
“Hamas constantly harassed me because of my Yazidi background and contact with my family, and even went so far as to format my phone during their investigation.1 After a year, they moved me to a guest house.”
When the Israel-Hamas war broke out in 2023, she began to move frequently again, but an NGO rescued her on October 1, she said.
The IDF said the prisoner was killed “possibly during an IDF attack” in Gaza and she fled to a safe house, from where she was rescued and taken to the Kerem Shalom border crossing.
When Fauzia told CNN about her ordeal, she did not mention the strike, only that she was rescued by an NGO (whose name she could not remember) in Rafah.
“From there American authorities took me and helped me return to Baghdad,” she said.
Hamas said in a statement that the Israel Defense Forces promoted “false narratives and fabricated stories about Yazidi girls in the Gaza Strip,” telling fabricated events that have no basis in fact.
It added that before she was killed in Syria, the Yazidi woman married a young Palestinian man who was fighting “as part of the opposition” in Syria.
Hamas claimed that she “travelled with her mother of her own free will to Turkey, Egypt and Gaza” before marrying her husband’s brother. After he was killed, the Palestinian Authority, at her request, “provided her with a private room in one of its government facilities in the southern Gaza Strip.”
Hamas said the IDF “did not release her” and that “the woman contacted her family, who contacted the Jordanian government, and the government coordinated with the IDF” to remove her to “Kerem, where there was a Yazidi woman.” He said he had coordinated the rescue from the “Shalom Crossing.” She crossed on her own from a government facility designated for her, relying on the knowledge of her husband’s family and the Palestinian Authority. ”
CNN has reached out to Jordanian authorities for comment.
Israel shared a video of her reunion with her family, who appeared overcome with emotion as they hugged her.
Iraq’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that she was released after more than four months of efforts by Iraqi government agencies in cooperation with U.S. and Jordanian authorities. The ministry did not say where she was rescued from, nor did it mention Israel.
U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller confirmed that the U.S. assisted in the evacuation of Fauzia from Gaza. He reiterated Israel’s explanation, saying, “She was able to escape due to the recent death of a prisoner in Gaza.”
“We were contacted by the Iraqi government, who informed us that she had escaped, that she was alive, and that she wanted to return to her family. We asked them to do everything possible to get her out of Gaza and bring her home. So over the past few weeks, we have worked with many partners in the region to get her out of Gaza,” Miller said Thursday. He spoke at a press conference.
CNN’s Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed reporting.
This story has been updated.
