A young hostage kidnapped by ISIS terrorists at age 11 and then held by Hamas for a decade has been rescued by Israeli forces in Gaza after a months-long operation led by the US, officials said Thursday.
Fawzia Amin Sido, 21, was freed earlier this week, with footage showing her being embraced tightly by her emotional family soon after touching back down in her native Iraq.
“Fawzia, a Yazidi girl kidnapped by ISIS from Iraq and brought to Gaza at just 11 years old, has finally been rescued by the Israeli security forces,” tweeted David Saranga, the director of the digital diplomacy bureau at Israel’s foreign ministry.
“For years, she was held captive by a Palestinian Hamas-ISIS member. She has now been reunited with her family.
“Her story is a reminder of the brutality faced by Yazidi children, taken without a choice,” he wrote of the more than 6,000 Yazidis captured by ISIS in 2014, including many sold into sexual slavery or trained as child soldiers.
The freed hostage was in good physical condition — but traumatized by her lengthy time in captivity, Iraqi officials said.
Sido had been snatched from her home back in 2014 when Islamic State jihadists were carrying out terror attacks on Yazidi communities across the country.
The young girl was then quickly sold off and trafficked to Gaza where she was held captive for the next 10 years.
Iraqi officials had been in contact with the woman for several months before this week’s rescue efforts — and had passed on her information to US officials, sources told Reuters.
Several prior attempts to rescue Sido over the past four months had failed due to ongoing security threats because of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, Iraqi officials said.
It wasn’t immediately clear exactly how she was released.
A State Department spokesperson only said Sido’s captor had recently been killed, which allowed her to seek repatriation.
The rescue operation also involved Israel, Jordan and Iraq, according to officials.
Of the more than 6,000 Yazidis captured by ISIS in Iraq in 2014, roughly 3,500 have been rescued or freed in the years since..
However, Iraqi officials estimate some 2,600 are still missing — with many feared dead.
With Post wires
