BAGHDAD: Iraq’s national security adviser said that authorities were actively searching for Elizabeth Tsurkov, an Israeli Russian academic kidnapped nearly two years ago in Baghdad.

Tsurkov, a doctoral student at Princeton University and fellow at the New Lines Institute for Strategy and Policy, has been missing in Iraq since March 2023.

Israeli authorities said later she had been kidnapped, blaming a pro-Iranian group for her disappearance.

National Security Adviser Qassem Al-Araji said “Iraqi authorities are working under the prime minister’s direction” to solve the issue.

“The security services are mobilized to locate her and find the group that kidnapped her,” he said, adding there had been no claims of responsibility for her abduction or demands for her release.

“We have to operate discreetly and through intermediaries” to locate her, he said.

Tsurkov, who had likely entered Iraq on her Russian passport, had traveled to the country as part of her doctoral studies.

An Iraqi security source told AFP that the last trip was not Tsurkov’s first visit to Iraq.

In November 2023, Iraqi channel Al Rabiaa TV aired the first hostage video of Tsurkov known to the public since her kidnapping.

AFP was unable to independently verify the footage or determine whether her statement was coerced.

In the video, Tsurkov mentioned the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Iraq’s Kataeb Hezbollah of holding her, but the armed faction has implied it was not involved in her disappearance.