The teenager was likely among the thousands of Yezidi women and children abducted by ISIS when militants seized the minority community’s heartland of Shingal in the summer of 2014.
“A force from the Intelligence Agency in the Ministry of Interior was able to free a Yezidi kidnapee held in one of the hideouts belonging to Daesh in al-Anbar’s desert,” reads a statement released by Iraq’s security media cell, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.
The cell did not provide details on the names or nationalities of the seven militants killed in the operation or any weapons and intelligence gathered at the scene.
Although ISIS was declared defeated in Iraq in December 2017, its remnants have retreated into Iraq’s deserts and mountains to resume their earlier insurgency tactics.
“We will continue our efforts to free the kidnapped children of our country held by Daesh, and we are bent on returning them to their families,” Yahya Rasul, spokesperson for Iraq’s Ministry of Defense, tweeted Thursday.
Ezidi24, a multi-lingual website specializing in Yezidi news, named the rescued woman as Jwan Ilyas Qirmish, born in 2000 and from Shingal, citing an unnamed source.
Some 6,417 Yezidis were abducted by ISIS in 2014. Many endured years of sexual slavery or were brutalized as child soldiers. According to the most recent data from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG)’s Yezidi Affairs Office, the fate of 2,992 is still unknown.
Hundreds were recently rescued from the last ISIS holdout in Baghouz, eastern Syria. ISIS was ousted from the town in March 2019.
Yezidi House, a Jazeera-based charity, has returned 491 people to their families in recent weeks, according to Hawarnews, a media outlet close to northern Syria’s Kurdish-led authority.
Three women and three children are still in the charity’s care and are yet to be handed back to their families.
The Yezidi Spiritual Council has said it will not accept children fathered by ISIS rapists into the community, leaving Yezidi survivors to choose between their faith and their children.
