Yazidi woman kidnapped by ISIS freed from Gaza after decade in captivity
Photo: Daily Mail
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S E E D E D C O N T E N T
A 21-year-old woman kidnapped by Islamic State militants in Iraq more than a decade ago has been freed from Gaza in an operation led by the US.
The operation this week also involved Israel, Jordan and Iraq, according to officials.
The woman is a member of the Yazidi religious minority , which saw more than 5,000 members killed and thousands more kidnapped in a 2014 campaign that the UN has said constituted genocide.
Silwan Sinjaree, the chief of staff of Iraq’s foreign minister, said she was freed after more than four months of efforts including several attempts that failed because of the difficult security situation resulting from Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.
She has been identified as Fawzia Sido. Reuters could not reach the woman directly for comment.
Iraqi officials had been in contact with the woman for months and passed on her information to US officials, who arranged for her exit from Gaza with the help of Israel, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Officials did not provide details of how exactly she was freed, and Jordanian and US embassy officials in Baghdad did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The director of the digital diplomacy bureau at Israel’s foreign ministry, David Saranga, posted on X: “Fawzia, a Yazidi girl kidnapped by Isis from Iraq and brought to Gaza at just 11 years old, has finally been rescued by the Israeli security forces.”
The Israeli military said it had coordinated with the US embassy in Jerusalem and “other international actors” in the operation.
It said in a statement her captor had been killed during the Gaza war, presumably by an Israeli strike, and she then fled to a hideout in the Gaza Strip.
A US state department spokesperson said the US on Tuesday had “helped to safely evacuate from Gaza a young Yazidi woman to be reunited with her family in Iraq”.
The spokesperson said the woman was kidnapped from her home in Iraq when she was 11, then sold and trafficked to Gaza. Her captor was recently killed, enabling her to escape and seek repatriation, the spokesperson said.
Sinjaree said she was in good physical condition but was traumatised. She had been reunited with family in northern Iraq, he added.
More than 6,000 Yazidis were captured by IS militants in Iraq’s Sinjar region in 2014, with many sold into sexual slavery or trained as child soldiers and taken across borders, including to Turkey and Syria.
Over the years, more than 3,500 have been rescued or freed, according to Iraqi authorities, with about 2,600 still missing.
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A 21-year-old woman kidnapped by Islamic State militants in Iraq more than a decade ago has been freed from Gaza in an operation led by the US.
The operation this week also involved Israel, Jordan and Iraq, according to officials.
The UN, in order to maintain its hatred of Israel will scramble to find some way to blame Israel, and try to exaggerate how many Gazans may have been injured or killed in the rescue operation, because Israeli forces did the rescue.
The woman is a member of the Yazidi religious minority , which saw more than 5,000 members killed and thousands more kidnapped in a 2014 campaign that the UN has said constituted genocide.
Silwan Sinjaree, the chief of staff of Iraq’s foreign minister, said she was freed after more than four months of efforts including several attempts that failed because of the difficult security situation resulting from Israel’s military offensive in Gaza.
Nobody marched or demonstrated in protest when that genocide and kidnapping originally took place. No Jews were involved in kidnapping her.
Iraqi officials had been in contact with the woman for months and passed on her information to US officials, who arranged for her exit from Gaza with the help of Israel, according to a source familiar with the matter.
The director of the digital diplomacy bureau at Israel’s foreign ministry, David Saranga, posted on X: “Fawzia, a Yazidi girl kidnapped by Isis from Iraq and brought to Gaza at just 11 years old, has finally been rescued by the Israeli security forces.”
It hasn't been reported that Rashida Tlaib complained that The Guardian has libeled Hamas with this story about its complicity in this matter. They should have reported that Hamas had treated her in a beneficial manner by not charging her any money for training her to be an 11 year old sex slave.