i24 News – Hamas on Wednesday claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s terror attack in Jaffa. In an official statement, the military wing of Hamas, The Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades, said the terrorists were two of its fighters from the city of Hebron.

The statement detailed: “our fighters were able to infiltrate our occupied territories, stab a soldier and seize his automatic weapon, then carry out the heroic operation in two different locations in the heart of (Tel Aviv), one of them inside a train station, and they eliminated the Zionist usurpers from zero distance.

The Al-Qassam Brigades announce that “the coming days will bring death that will come to you from different areas of the West Bank, at the hands of our fierce fighters, the sons of the leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Saleh Al-Arouri, whom we are preparing and equipping to write with their heroism pages of glory in the Battle of the Flood of Al-Aqsa that will gladden the hearts of our people, God willing. As long as the occupation continues to exterminate our people and children in Gaza.”

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i24 News – Israel’s foreign minister said on Wednesday that he was barring U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres from entering the country over his failure to unequivocally condemn Iran’s missile barrage on Israel. Guterres has a long catalogue of dubious statements on Israel’s conflict with its Arab and Muslim neighbors.

Iran fired more than 180 ballistic missiles at Israel on Tuesday, days after an IDF strike in Beirut eliminated the leadership of Iran’s terror proxy in Lebanon, Hezbollah. Many were intercepted in flight but some penetrated missile defenses. The attack’s only victim was a Palestinian man in the West Bank.

Guterres on Tuesday issued a brief statement after the missile attack condemning “the broadening of the Middle East conflict, with escalation after escalation.”

Israeli foreign minister Israel Katz said Guterres’ failure to call out Iran made him persona non grata in Israel.

“Anyone who cannot unequivocally condemn Iran’s heinous attack on Israel, as nearly all the countries of the world have done, does not deserve to set foot on Israeli soil,” Katz said.

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A 21-year-old woman kidnapped by Islamic State militants in Iraq more than a decade ago was freed from Gaza this week in an operation involving the United States and Israel, officials said.

The rescue also involved Jordan and Iraq, according to officials.

The woman is a member of the ancient Yazidi religious minority mostly found in Iraq and Syria which saw more than 5,000 members killed and thousands more kidnapped in an IS campaign in 2014 that the U.N. has said constituted genocide.

She was freed after more than four months of efforts that involved several attempts that failed due to the difficult security situation resulting from Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, Silwan Sinjaree, chief of staff of Iraq’s foreign minister, told Reuters.

She has been identified as Fawzia Sido. Reuters could not reach the woman directly for comment.

Iraqi officials had been in contact with the woman for months and passed on her information to US officials, who arranged for her exit from Gaza with the help of Israel, according to a source familiar with the matter.

The Israeli military said it had coordinated with the US Embassy in Jerusalem and “other international actors” in the operation to free Sido.

It said in a statement her captor had been killed during the Gaza war, presumably by an Israeli strike, and she then fled to a hideout inside the Gaza Strip.

“In a complex operation coordinated between Israel, the United States, and other international actors, she was recently rescued in a secret mission from the Gaza Strip through the Kerem Shalom Crossing,” it said.

After entering Israel, she continued on to Jordan through the Allenby Bridge Crossing and from there returned to her family in Iraq, the military said.

A State Department spokesperson said the United States on Tuesday “helped to safely evacuate from Gaza a young Yezidi woman to be reunited with her family in Iraq.”

The spokesperson said she was kidnapped from her home in Iraq aged 11 and sold and trafficked to Gaza. Her captor was recently killed, allowing her to escape and seek repatriation, the spokesperson said.

TRAUMATIZED

Sinjaree said she was in good physical condition but was traumatized by her time in captivity and by the dire humanitarian situation in Gaza. She had since been reunited with family in northern Iraq, he added.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani had directly followed up on the issue with US officials on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York last month, according to Khalaf Sinjar, Sudani’s advisor for Yazidi affairs.

More than 6,000 Yazidis were captured by Islamic State militants from Sinjar region in Iraq in 2014, with many sold into sexual slavery or trained as child soldiers and taken across borders, including to Turkey and Syria.

Over the years, more than 3,500 have been rescued or freed, according to Iraqi authorities, with some 2,600 still missing.

Many are feared dead but Yazidi activists say they believe hundreds are still alive.

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