Israeli-Russian woman missing in Iraq
Iraqi federal police force stand guard at a checkpoint in a street in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. Photo: AFP
Jerusalem – Military group Kataib Hezbollah is holding an Israeli-Russian scholar who had been missing in Iraq for months, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claimed.
“Elizabeth Tsurkov is still alive and we hold Iraq responsible for her safety and well-being,” according to a statement from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office.
According to the statement, Tsurkov had traveled to Iraq “on her Russian passport at her own initiative pursuant to work on her doctorate and academic research on behalf of Princeton University in the US.”
She had arrived in Baghdad “at the beginning of December 2022,” an anonymous Western diplomat stationed in Iraq told the AFP.
The Iraqi intelligence source claimed that Tsurkov was kidnapped while she was exiting a cafe in the Karrada district of the Iraqi capital.
The same source also provided AFP with a surveillance camera footage from inside the café showing a young woman leaving with a male.