A 21-year-old Yazidi woman who was held for more than 10 years by a Hamas terrorist affiliated with ISIS has been rescued, according to the Israel Defense Forces.
In a post on X, the IDF said that the woman was returned to her family in Iraq after being freed from her yearslong captivity.
The complex operation involved, and was coordinated by, the IDF and was led by the Coordination of Government Activities in the Territories and the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, as well as other international entities.
The Times of Israel reported that Fawzia Amin Sido was taken from her family in 2014 at the age of 11 amid ISIS attacks on Yazidi communities in Iraq. She was then sold to a Hamas terrorist from Gaza who was visiting the country at the time.
Sido's captor was presumably killed in the IDF strikes, the military said, and she fled to a hiding place before being rescued on a secret operation through the Kerem Shalom Crossing.
"This is further proof of the connection between Hamas and ISIS, as well as the crimes against humanity committed by the terrorist organization in Gaza," the IDF said on X. "We will continue to act to dismantle the Hamas-ISIS terrorist organization and free all hostages in Hamas captivity."
A State Department spokesperson told the Times that the United States "helped to safely evacuate from Gaza a young Yazidi woman" on Oct. 1 "to be reunited with her family in Iraq."
Steve Maman, a Jewish philanthropist who has been called the "Jewish Schindler," shared a video on X of the young woman's reunion with her family on Wednesday 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 wrote. "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."
David Saranga, director of the Israeli Foreign Ministry's Digital Diplomacy Bureau, also commented on her release.
"For years, she was held captive by a Palestinian Hamas-ISIS member," Saranga wrote on X. "Her story is a reminder of the brutality faced by Yazidi children, taken without a choice."
The Yazidis are a Kurdish-speaking religious minority group hailing from northern Iraq. In 2014, more than 6,000 Yazidis were captured by ISIS terrorists, with many of the women and girls sold into sexual slavery and the boys indoctrinated in jihadi ideology and trained as child soldiers.
More than 3,500 have been rescued or freed in the years since, according to Iraqi authorities, with approximately 2,600 still missing.
Nicole Wells ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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