A Yazidi woman who was kidnapped aged 11 in Iraq by the Islamic State group and subsequently taken to Gaza has been rescued after more than a decade in captivity there, officials said.
The 21-year-old, identified as Fawzia Amin Sido, was freed this week in an operation that involved Israel, the United States, and Iraq.
The Yazidis are a religious minority who mostly live in Iraq and Syria. In 2014, Islamic State militants took over the Yazidi community in the Sinjar region of northern Iraq, killing and displacing thousands of men and enslaving girls and women in a series of crimes that the United Nations has said constituted genocide.
The Israeli military said Sido's captor in Gaza had been killed during the ongoing war between Israel and the Palestinian group Hamas, presumably as a result of an Israeli strike.
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After entering Israel, the 21-year-old continued on to Jordan through the Allenby Bridge Crossing and from there returned to her family in Iraq, Reuters reported on Thursday (October 3).
"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," wrote David Saranga, the Director of the Digital Diplomacy Bureau at Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
A State Department spokesperson said the United States "helped to safely evacuate from Gaza a young Yazidi woman to be reunited with her family in Iraq" on Tuesday (October 1).
The spokesperson said the woman had been kidnapped from her home in Iraq aged 11 and then trafficked to Gaza.
The American military reportedly did not take part in the evacuation.
Sido returned to her home in northern Iraq and reunited with her family after a months-long operation that involved the United States, Israel, and Iraq
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Iraqi officials had reportedly been in contact with Sido for months and passed on her information to US officials, who collaborated with Israel to arrange her exit from Gaza via the Kerem Shalom border crossing.
The operation to free the Yazidi woman also involved "other international actors," according to the Israeli military.
Silwan Sinjaree, an Iraqi foreign ministry official, told Reuters that Sido was rescued after several earlier attempts over the course of four months failed due to the security situation in Gaza.
Sido was in good physical condition but was left traumatized by her time in captivity and by the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, Sinjaree said.
According to United Nations data, over 40,600 Palestinians and more than 1,200 Israelis have been reported killed since October 7, 2023.
According to United Nations data, over 40,600 Palestinians and more than 1,200 Israelis have been reported killed since October 7, 2023.
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Canadian philanthropist Steve Maman shared a video of Sido reuniting with her family in northern Iraq, writing, "I made a promise to Fawzia the yazidi who was hostage of Hamas in Gaza that I would bring her back home to her mother in Sinjar.
"To her it seemed surreal and impossible but not to me, my only enemy was time. Our team reunited her moments ago with her mother and family in Sinjar."
In 2014, more than 6,000 Yazidis were captured by the Salafi jihadist group Islamic State, also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).
Following the attack on Sinjar, ISIS forcibly transferred thousands of captured Yazidis into Syria, where girls as young as nine were subjected to sexual slavery and boys as young as seven were forcibly trained for combat roles and suicide missions.
In 2014, the Islamic State group (ISIS) took over the Sinjar region of northern Iraq, massacring and kidnapping thousands of Yazidis
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"Based upon independent and impartial investigations, complying with international standards and UN best practice, there is clear and convincing evidence that the crimes against the Yazidi people clearly constituted genocide," said Karim Khan, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, in May 2021.
Khan concluded that "a full scope of criminality" had been displayed in the region.
"Executions, slavery, sexual slavery. Crimes against children that are horrific, and really chill one's soul, that how on earth could such things be allowed to happen. Yet they did," Khan described, adding that the UN supports developments towards legislation in Iraq that will allow for Islamic State members to be prosecuted.
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"Legislation, of course, is needed to ensure that Iraq has the legal architecture in place to prosecute this hemorrhage of the human soul: not as common crimes of terrorism, heinous though they are, but as acts of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes," he added.
Sido was in good physical condition but was left traumatized by her time in captivity and the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza, said Iraqi official Silwan Sinjaree
Between 2,000 and 5,500 Yazidis were killed, and more than 6,000 were kidnapped during the attack, according to lists compiled by local authorities and human rights organizations.
Iraqi authorities say 3,500 Yazidis have been rescued or freed, and 2,600 members of the community remain missing.
"I hope she can find some semblance of peace in this life," a social media user wrote
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