UPDATE 12:41 P.M.: A message posted Monday night on Gill Rosenberg's Facebook page, more than 24 hours after reports of her alleged capture, said she "safe and sound" and has not been captured. There was no immediate verification that she was responsible for the post. She had sent a message a few days ago that she would be in an area where she would not have access to her Facebook page but that a friend would be handling the page in her absence.
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JERUSALEM—Spokesmen for the Islamic State (IS) claimed over the weekend to have captured a 31-year-old Canadian-Israeli woman fighting alongside Kurdish forces in Syria. Kurdish sources dismissed the claim, "with a high level of certainty," as propaganda. Neither side has thus far released a video to support their position.
The woman, Gill Rosenberg, left Israel last month for Iraq, announcing her intention on Facebook to join Kurdish forces in their fight against IS. She became the first foreign female volunteer to join the Kurdish ranks. She was subsequently interviewed on Israel Radio from Iraq at least twice. On one occasion, she said she was only several hundred yards from IS forces. She reportedly joined a Kurdish woman’s unit undergoing military training and posted photos of herself on Facebook wearing camouflage uniform and wielding a Kalachnikov and pistol.
An IS spokesman said she was captured in the battle for the Syrian city of Kobani on the Turkish border. The U.S.-based monitoring group, SITE, said that IS jihadists claimed that a woman described as a "female Zionist soldier" had been captured. Kurdish sources said that no foreign volunteers were fighting with them in Kobani and that, in any case, foreign volunteers are not given combat roles and only support fighters from the rear. Some media reports, whose sources are unknown, say that Rosenberg may have been captured in Kobani after three suicide bombers detonated themselves in her area. There was no report on her condition.
A Canadian Foreign Ministry statement acknowledged the reports that one of its citizens had been captured by IS. "Canada is pursuing all appropriate channels to seek further information and officials are in close contact with local authorities," the statement said.
An Israeli Foreign Ministry official said that "Israel is trying to obtain more information on the matter."
After communicating with Kurdish activists via Facebook, Rosenberg set out from her home in Tel Aviv on Nov. 2. She stopped in the Jordanian capital of Amman before flying to Erbil, capital of the Kurdish region of Iraq.
Born in Vancouver, she experienced a family crisis after her parents divorced, according to an interview she gave the Tel Aviv daily Ma’ariv in 2009. She said that she had learned to fly and worked as a pilot of passenger planes.
However, her CV was marred several years ago when she joined a ring in the United States cheating elderly Americans of their money through a fake lottery scheme. She was sentenced to four years imprisonment. Immigrating to Israel, she served as a volunteer in the Israeli army, reportedly serving as an instructor for Kenyan soldiers who came to Israel for search and rescue training. There was media speculation Sunday that she may have gone to fight IS as an act of redemption for her criminal past.
Israeli officials had previously said that when Rosenberg returns to Israel she will be prosecuted for flying to Iraq, officially an enemy country that Israelis are forbidden to enter. Several Israeli Arabs who entered Syria in order to fight for IS were arrested after their return.