Yazidi woman kidnapped by ISIS in 2014 at age 11 rescued from Gaza, reunited with family in Iraq
A Yazidi woman who was kidnapped by ISIS from Iraq in 2014 at the age of 11 and transferred to the Gaza Strip has finally been rescued and reunited with her family.
Unverified posts on social media say that Israeli security forces carried out the rescue operation.
In a statement, the Iraqi Foreign Ministry says that the woman, Fawzia Amin Sido, was released through joint efforts “in high coordination” with the US embassies in Baghdad and Amman along with Jordanian authorities.
Jewish philanthropist Steve Maman, dubbed by some as the “Jewish Schindler,” shares a video of her reuniting with her family last night.
“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,” Maman writes on X. “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.”
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.
For years, she was held captive by a Palestinian Hamas-ISIS member.
She has now been reunited with her family. Her story is a… pic.twitter.com/nkVotqYdov
— David Saranga (@DavidSaranga) October 3, 2024
The Yazidis are a Kurdish-speaking group hailing from northern Iraq.
The Sunni extremist ISIS group attacked the Yazidi bastion of Sinjar in August 2014, killing more than 1,200 people, according to local authorities.
A further 6,400 Yazidis were abducted, around half of whom were rescued or managed to flee.