The U.S. State Department said Thursday it had helped safely evacuate a young Yazidi woman from Gaza, where she had been held captive. State Department spokesman Matthew Miller told a news briefing the woman had initially been kidnapped by the Islamic State in Iraq when she was 11 years-old. She was then sold and forced to marry a Hamas fighter in Gaza, and moved to Gaza against her will, Miller added. Miller said the recent death of her captor in Gaza allowed her to escape, "and we were contacted by the Iraqi government, who was made aware of the fact that she escaped, that she was alive, and that she wanted to come home to her family." Miller said the U.S. had worked with the government of Israel, and with other partners as well, to get the woman out of Gaza and home to her family. Israel’s military said Thursday that the 21-year-old woman was freed in an Israeli-led rescue operation this week that was coordinated with the United States. She arrived back in Iraq on Wednesday. The Israeli military said the Hamas member who had held her captive was killed, apparently by an airstrike. Israel’s military says the woman was taken through the Kerem Shalom border, which connects Gaza with Israel. From there she traveled to Jordan and then Iraq, where she was reunited with her family. Islamic State militants enslaved and killed thousands from the Yazidi religious minorities as they seized much of northern Iraq and eastern Syria in 2014. The Iraqi government has said only that she was freed “in one of the countries of the region.”