The US affirms that the young Yazidi woman freed from Gaza is “safe and sound” with her family in Iraq

MADRID 4 Oct. (EUROPA PRESS) –

The spokesman for the United States Department of State, Matthew Miller, stated this Thursday that the young Yazidi girl rescued from the Gaza Strip, where she was after being kidnapped by the jihadist group Islamic State in Iraq when she was 11 years old and later being transferred to the Palestinian enclave, where she was held at the hands of a member of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), she is “safe and sound” with her family in Iraq.

“Now I can say that she is safe and sound with her family in Iraq,” Miller declared during a press conference in which he explained that Washington has collaborated in the rescue at the request of the Iraqi Government.

“We recently helped evacuate a young Yazidi girl from Gaza so she could join her family in Iraq. The circumstances of this case are really difficult to describe. This is a woman who was kidnapped ten years ago, when she was 11 years old. by the Islamic State in Iraq, sold and forced to marry a Hamas fighter in Gaza, and moved to Gaza against her will,” Miller said during a press conference.

The Israeli Army managed to rescue her after the death of her captor in Gaza, which allowed her to escape, after which the Government of Iraq contacted the United States to inform them of the event and that the young woman “wanted to return home to her family”, so Baghdad asked that they do “everything possible” to remove her from the Palestinian enclave and take her back to her home.

The “complex” operation to rescue the 21-year-old girl, identified as Fawzia Amin Sido, has been carried out through the Kerem Shalom crossing and coordinated by the Defense Forces and the United States Embassy in Israel, as well as others international actors.

Islamic State swept into Yazidi-majority areas as part of its lightning offensive in northwest Iraq in the summer of 2014, killing thousands of people and enslaving thousands of women and girls from this religious community.

The offensive against the Yazidis – who practice an ancient form of religion that combines elements of Zoroastrianism and ancient Mesopotamian religions, considered “heretical” by the Sunni fundamentalist organization – meant the beginning of a genocide of which the exact figures are still unknown. .