ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - A 21-year-old Yazidi woman who was kidnapped by the Islamic State (ISIS) and living in the Gaza Strip was rescued and reunited with family members, Iraqi and Kurdistan Region officials announced on Thursday. Iraqi authorities said they were made aware of her situation through Rudaw coverage.
Fawzia Amin Sido “was released through joint efforts between the Foreign Ministry and the National Intelligence Service,” a statement from Iraq’s foreign ministry said, adding that she is from al-Qahtaniya in Nineveh’s Baaj district.
The area near Shingal (Sinjar) was taken over in August 2014 by the ISIS group. Sido was transferred to several countries “before her liberation,” the statement added.
“Fawzia was with an ISIS militant who is from the Gaza Strip in Palestine. The militant has been killed. It has been four years since the mother of the killed militant has taken Fawzia to the Gaza Strip with herself,” Sarab Elias, director general for Survivors Affairs at the Iraqi Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, told Rudaw.
Elias said that after obtaining “important information” they determined her location in the Gaza Strip, and repatriated her from Jordan.
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An advisor to the Iraqi prime minister said that information obtained from Rudaw was key.
"We first got information through Rudaw about the kidnapped Yazidi girl in the Gaza Strip when she appeared on Rudaw and talked about her being Yazidi and being in Gaza," Khalaf Shingali, PM Mohammed Shia al-Sudani's advisor for Yazidi affairs, told Rudaw on Thursday.
Shingali said that when they saw the woman, they immediately began efforts to rescue her by establishing communication channels and identifying her location. They remained in contact with her until she was brought to Jordan and then back to her Iraq.
Her rescue was carried out in coordination with Iraq’s foreign ministry, the National Intelligence Agency, the American embassy in Jordan, and Jordanian officials, according to Shingali.
Intelligence and foreign ministry officials were “in high coordination with the U.S. embassies in Baghdad and Amman, and the Jordanian authorities, after efforts and follow-up that lasted for more than four months,” the foreign ministry’s statement said.
As of Wednesday, Sido was returned to her family and is in Shingal, according to Elias.
“We welcome any initiative that leads to the rescue of Yazidi women and girls and we thank any person who contributed to [such efforts],” Khairi Bozani, head of the Yazidi affairs in the Kurdistan Regional Government’s religious affairs ministry told Rudaw.
ISIS committed genocide in Shingal. The terror group abducted 6,417 women and children, forcing a large number of them into sexual slavery and labor. So far, 3,581 have been rescued, Hussein Qaidi, head of the Office for Rescuing Abducted Yazidis, which is affiliated with the Kurdistan Region Presidency, told Rudaw in August.
“The foreign ministry confirms that it will make every effort to ensure the liberation of all kidnapped girls, whether Yazidis or other components who were transferred outside Iraq,” the Iraqi foreign ministry added.
The statement noted its commitment to the “national effort aimed at rehabilitation and integration into society, and bringing the perpetrators to justice.”
According to unofficial figures from Qaidi, between 120,000 and 130,000 Yazidis have left Iraq since ISIS swept through Shingal. Iraq has failed to provide the community with protection and prosperity and a huge number of Yazidis no longer consider the country home.
Many Yazidis still living inside and outside internally displaced person (IDP) camps in the Kurdistan Region have been reluctant to return to Shingal. Some who left their homelands have been forced to return to the camps due to a lack of infrastructure and security.
Nahro Mohammed contributed to this report.
Updated at 5:07 p.m.
