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

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.

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.

U.S. 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.