Chief of staff to Iraq's foreign minister Silwan Sinjaree told Reuters that the woman, identified as Fawzia Sido, was freed after 4 months of failed attempts and complications due to the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict taking place in the Gaza strip.
A source disclosed that Iraq had reached out to the United States, which then coordinated with Israel to free her from her captors and facilitate her safe return to her homeland. Officials told Reuters that she is now reunited with her family in Iraq and resting after her rescue.
The Israeli military released a statement saying that the person holding her captive had been presumably killed by an Israeli strike in Gaza after which Sido fled and hid in Gaza, awaiting a rescue. "In a complex operation coordinated between Israel, the United States, and other international actors, she was recently rescued in a secret mission from the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom Crossing," the statement read.
A United States State Department spokesperson said that the US had "helped to safely evacuate from Gaza a young Yezidi woman to be reunited with her family in Iraq" on Tuesday, adding that Sido had been kidnapped from her home nearly a decade ago and was sold and trafficked in Gaza. A US defense official disclosed that while the US played a part in the rescue, American military forces were never involved.
Islamic terrorist group Hamas has come out and rejected the claim that Sido was kidnapped, stating that Sido had married a Palestinian who was killed before she embarked on a journey with her mother-in-law through Turkey and Eqypt, eventually ending up in Gaza where they said she crossed legally. They also said they were aware she was presently trying to leave Gaza.
"She requested to contact her family because she felt increasingly unsafe in Gaza amid the intense bombing and brutal attacks by the Israeli occupation. She asked for evacuation, especially after her husband was martyred," the Gaza government media office said. "The Yazidi woman left the government facility to the crossing on her own, with the knowledge of her deceased husband’s family and the Palestinian government. The occupation did not 'rescue' her, as falsely claimed in its statement aimed at misleading public opinion," it added.
In 2014, the Islamic State slaughtered over 5,000 Yazidi religious minorities in Iraq and Syria, which the UN has constituted as genocide.
