Yazidi woman captured by ISIS rescued in Gaza after more than a decade in captivity

By Nechirvan Mando, Michael Rios and Mohammed Tawfeeq, CNN

(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) said Thursday that Fawzia Amin Sido was freed this week in an operation coordinated between Israel, the United States and other international actors.

Fawzia told CNN that she has been returned to Iraq after enduring years of captivity.

She said that she was initially kidnapped by ISIS as a child in August 2014 when the group captured the city of Sinjar in the Nineveh Governorate of northern Iraq, executing Yazidi men and boys and committing acts of sexual violence and rape against women and girls, among other crimes.

Over the next few years, Fawzia was trafficked to different locations across several countries.

“We ended up in Al-Hol camp (in Syria) before we were smuggled to Idlib in 2019, and from there, we went to Turkey. In 2020, they arranged a passport for me in Turkey so I could fly from Istanbul to Hurghada, Egypt, and then to Gaza,” she said.

She told CNN that she stayed in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip for a year, where life was “unbearable.”

“Hamas constantly harassed me due to my Yazidi background and contact with my family, even going so far as to format my phone [erase its contents] during their investigations. After a year, they moved me to a guest house.”

When the Israel-Hamas war broke out in 2023, she was again moved around frequently – until October 1, when she said an NGO rescued her.

The IDF said that her captor was killed, “presumably during IDF strikes” in Gaza, allowing her to flee to a hideout, from where she was rescued and taken to the Kerem Shalom border crossing.

Fawzia did not mention a strike when she spoke to CNN about her ordeal, saying only that she was rescued by an NGO – which she couldn’t recall the name of – in Rafah.

“From there, American officials took me and helped return me to Baghdad,” she said.

Hamas, in a statement, said the IDF was promoting “a false narrative and a fabricated story about the Yazidi girl who was in the Gaza Strip, and narrated fabricated events that have no basis in truth.”

It added that “the Yazidi woman married a Palestinian young man” who was fighting “in the ranks of the opposition forces” in Syria before he was killed there.

Hamas alleged that she “traveled of her own free will with his mother” to Turkey, Egypt, and Gaza before marrying her husband’s brother. After he was killed, the Palestinian government “provided her with a private room in one of the government facilities in the southern Gaza Strip” at her request.

Hamas said the IDF “did not free her” and that “the lady contacted her family, they in turn contacted the Jordanian government, which in turn coordinated” with the IDF to get her out through “the Kerem Shalom crossing, where the Yazidi lady went from the government facility designated for her to the crossing herself with the knowledge of her husband’s family and the knowledge of the Palestinian government.”

CNN is reaching out to Jordanian authorities for comment.

Thousands remain missing

Fawzia was among thousands of Yazidi women ISIS militants abducted during their attack on Iraq’s Sinjar district, the hometown of the Yazidis, in August 2014.

Fawzia’s attorney, Zemfira Dlovani, told CNN on Friday there are currently between 2,300 to 2,500 Yazidi women and children still missing, but efforts continue to locate the missing people.

Dlovani did not want to share details on how she operates but says she hopes to rescue more missing Yazidi people.

“We are not going to stop until the last person is saved,” Dlovani, who’s also Yazidi, said. Dlovani said that she worked on Fawzia’s case for months until she was able to rescue her from Gaza with the help of Israeli authorities.

She said a person who knows Fawzia had reached out to her asking for help months ago, “and since then I never stoped woking on the case.”

“I was only in touch with Israeli officials during this time,” she added. The attorney said following Fawzia’s rescue she’s hoping more Yazidi women will reach out and ask for help.

Israel released a video showing her reuniting with her family members, who were overcome with emotion as they embraced her.

Iraq’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said she was freed after over four months of efforts from Iraqi government agencies working with American and Jordanian authorities. The ministry didn’t say where she was rescued from and made no mention of Israel.

US State Department spokesman Matthew Miller confirmed that the US helped evacuate Fawzia from Gaza. He echoed Israel’s account, saying that “the recent death of her captor in Gaza allowed her to escape.”

“We were contacted by the Iraqi government, who was made aware of the fact that she escaped, that she was alive, and that she wanted to come home to her family. And the government of Iraq asked us to do whatever we could to get her out of Gaza and get her home. So over the past few weeks, we worked with a number of our partners in the region to get her out of Gaza,” Miller said at a press briefing on Thursday.

This story has been updated.

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