Foreign Affairs working to confirm whether a White Rock woman was captured by ISIS
Posted December 1, 2014 6:36 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) – Has a woman from White Rock been captured by ISIS?
That’s the question Foreign Affairs is trying to answer, following reports out of the Middle East that Gill Rosenberg has been kidnapped in Syria.
There is growing confusion now over whether she’s actually come in harm’s way.
The 31-year-old left Canada to join Kurdish soldiers in the fight against ISIS and was reportedly captured yesterday. But now, family and friends are expressing online that they believe she is safe.
A Kurdish military commander has also conveyed that message to Reuters.
Middle East expert Andre Gerolymatos with SFU tries to explain the woman’s reasons for heading into a war zone.
“I think partly adventure,” he surmises. “The other factor is that the Kurds are well-disposed towards Israel. So in an indirect way, she might have thought that she’s helping Israel.”
Rosenberg is an Israeli-Canadian.
Gerolymatos says safe or not, the fact that she is on the ground there is a new wrinkle in the conflict.
“It demonstrates that the war in Syria and Iraq is certainly bringing in a new kind of individual — those opposed to ISIS. And is it going to attract more people from Canada, the United States, and Europe? We might find Canadians fighting on opposite sides of a conflict.”
Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs says it is trying to verify Rosenberg’s whereabouts.
