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Yazidi Woman Freed from Gaza in US-led Operation After Decade in Captivity
Protestors demonstrate on behalf of Yazidis at White House in Washington DC on March 15, 2019.
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.
The post Yazidi Woman Freed from Gaza in US-led Operation After Decade in Captivity first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels
View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.
i24 News – Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Scandinavian country said on Friday.
The decision comes on the heels of multiple revelations regarding the agency’s employees’ involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channeling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.
“Large parts of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible,” Dousa said. “For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through.”
The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.
“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.
The post Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Pope Calls Gaza Airstrikes ‘Cruelty’ After Israeli Minister’s Criticism
Pope Francis waves after delivering his traditional Christmas Day Urbi et Orbi speech to the city and the world from the main balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, December 25, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Yara Nardi
Pope Francis on Saturday again condemned Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, a day after an Israeli government minister publicly denounced the pontiff for suggesting the global community should study whether the military offensive there constitutes a genocide of the Palestinian people.
Francis opened his annual Christmas address to the Catholic cardinals who lead the Vatican’s various departments with what appeared to be a reference to Israeli airstrikes on Friday that killed at least 25 Palestinians in Gaza.
“Yesterday, children were bombed,” said the pope. “This is cruelty. This is not war. I wanted to say this because it touches the heart.”
The pope, as leader of the 1.4-billion-member Roman Catholic Church, is usually careful about taking sides in conflicts, but he has recently been more outspoken about Israel’s military campaign against Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
In book excerpts published last month, the pontiff said some international experts said that “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide.”
Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli sharply criticized those comments in an unusual open letter published by Italian newspaper Il Foglio on Friday. Chikli said the pope’s remarks amounted to a “trivialization” of the term genocide.
Francis also said on Saturday that the Catholic bishop of Jerusalem, known as a patriarch, had tried to enter the Gaza Strip on Friday to visit Catholics there, but was denied entry.
The patriarch’s office told Reuters it was not able to comment on the pope’s remarks about the patriarch being denied entry.
Israeli officials were not immediately reachable for comment on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, and the Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The post Pope Calls Gaza Airstrikes ‘Cruelty’ After Israeli Minister’s Criticism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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IDF Pledges to Implement Lessons from Failure to Intercept Houthi Missile
Iranian-backed Yemeni terrorist leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi. Photo: Screenshot
i24 News – The Israeli military said on Saturday that while the investigation into the failure to intercept the missile that hit Tel Aviv early in the morning was still ongoing, some lessons were already being implemented. The ballistic missile, fired by Yemen’s Houthi jihadists, landed at a playground in a residential area, leading to 16 people sustaining injuries from glass shards.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson said that “some of the conclusions have already been implemented, in regards of both interception and early warning.”
The spokesperson added that “no further details regarding aerial defense activities and the alert system can be disclosed due to operational security considerations.”
The Houthis have repeatedly fired drones and missiles towards Israel in what they describe as “acts of solidarity” with Palestinians in Gaza.
The post IDF Pledges to Implement Lessons from Failure to Intercept Houthi Missile first appeared on Algemeiner.com.