A 21-year-old Yazidi woman who was kidnapped by ISIS in 2014 has been rescued from Gaza and reunited with her family in Iraq. The State Department said when the girl was just 11 years old, ISIS kidnapped her in Iraq, sold her, forced her to marry a Hamas fighter and then moved her to Gaza against her will.
The rescue was a complex coordinated international effort involving Israel, the U.S., and Iraq to help the woman reunite with her family.
“The recent death of her captor in Gaza allowed her to escape,” U.S. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said during a news conference. “And 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.”
Authorities said her captor was likely killed by an Israeli airstrike during the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict.
Approximately 2,600 Yazidis remain missing since the 2014 ISIS attacks, which the U.N. has described as genocide.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said he’s determined to find and rescue the remaining missing Yazidis.
