Hamas refutes Israeli claim of rescuing Yazidi woman

The Hamas-controlled government in the Gaza Strip on Friday rejected Israeli claims that they rescued a Yazidi woman, Fawzia Amin Sido, more than a decade after she was abducted by ISIS in Sinjar, the hometown of the Yazidi minority in northern Iraq.

Israeli officials had announced that their military, in cooperation with international actors, had rescued the woman. Gaza authorities, however, said this was a "fabricated story."

"The Israeli army promoted a false narrative and a fabricated story about the Yazidi girl who was in the Gaza Strip and narrated fabricated events that have no truth or basis," read a statement from the media office of the Palestinian government in Gaza.

These remarks were made in response to an Israeli army statement from Thursday, which claimed that their forces had freed a 21-year-old Yazidi woman in Gaza after killing her captor. The Israeli military maintained that this operation was conducted with the coordination of international actors.

However, this version of events has been met with skepticism, as several countries and organisations have issued conflicting statements regarding their involvement in the rescue operation.

Iraqi foreign ministry confirms rescue

According to a statement by the Iraqi Foreign Ministry on Friday, the rescue involved collaboration between Iraq's Foreign Ministry, the National Intelligence Service, the U.S. embassies in Baghdad and Amman, and Jordanian authorities.

The New Arab contacted both the Iraqi Foreign Ministry and government spokesperson Basim Al-Awadi, but did not receive a response by the time of publication. 

Matthew Miller, spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, also confirmed Washington’s role in the operation, though Iraq’s official account made no mention of Israeli involvement, nor did it specify where the woman had been freed from.

Sido was only a child when ISIS abducted her during their brutal campaign against the Yazidi community, which saw thousands of women and girls enslaved and subjected to sexual violence.

The Iraqi Foreign Ministry expressed relief at Sido’s safe return, praising the coordination that led to her rescue after more than four months of effort. The ministry confirmed that Sido had been reunited with her family in Iraq.

However, the media office in Gaza presented a different account of Sido's recent history.

The office stressed that she is now 25 years old and had married a Palestinian man from Khan Younis, who had fought with Syrian opposition forces. Following his death, Sido travelled to Turkey and Egypt before returning to Gaza, where she married her late husband’s brother. After he, too, was killed in an Israeli airstrike, she sought protection from the Palestinian government.

Different accounts

The Gaza statement said that Sido had lived freely in Gaza and requested assistance in leaving the territory amid the escalating bombardments by the Israeli army. She was evacuated through the Karm Abu Salem crossing in coordination with Jordanian authorities.

The Palestinian government in Gaza urged media outlets to disregard Israel’s "fabricated" narrative, emphasizing that Sido had travelled through several countries without detection before settling in Gaza. They accused Israel of distorting the story to improve its public image amid the ongoing violence.

"We condemn the Israeli occupation’s murder of the Yazidi woman’s husband and call on the international community to hold Israel accountable for its continued crimes against humanity," the Gaza government said, adding that they would continue to protect foreign nationals caught in the conflict.

In a 2023 interview with Rudaw, a Kurdish media outlet, Sido revealed that she had been married off to a Palestinian ISIS fighter.

The Yazidis, who live mostly in areas around Nineveh province in northwestern Iraq, were massacred and enslaved on a large scale on August 3, 2014, by ISIS militants who seized the town of Sinjar. ISIS extremists launched a genocidal campaign against the minority, involving killings, abductions, rape, and enslavement.

The Iraqi army and Kurdish Peshmerga forces were widely criticized for failing to defend the town, leaving the Yazidis at the mercy of the extremists. So far, many issues remain unresolved, including the whereabouts of hundreds of Yazidi women and children.  

Israel’s military assault on Gaza has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians, most of them civilians, according to Gaza’s health ministry. It has also displaced nearly all of the enclave’s 2.3 million people, caused a hunger crisis, and led to genocide allegations at the International Court of Justice, which Israel denies.

The war was sparked by the October 7 attack led by Hamas in southern Israel, resulting in the deaths of around 1,200 people, with approximately 250 taken captive. Hamas has stated that the attack was in response to decades of Israeli occupation, aggression, and the siege of Gaza.