Iraq’s national security adviser said Wednesday 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, is believed to have been held by Islamist terrorists since March 2023.

National Security Adviser Qassem al-Araji told AFP that “Iraqi authorities are working under the prime minister’s direction” to solve the issue.

Israeli authorities have blamed the Iran-backed Iraqi terror group Kataeb Hezbollah, though no group has yet claimed responsibility for her disappearance.

“The security services are mobilized to locate her and find the group that kidnapped her,” al-Araji said, adding there had been no claims of responsibility for her abduction or demands for her release. “We have to operate discreetly and through intermediates” to locate her, he added.

Al-Araji’s statement comes in the wake of public demands on the matter by US President Donald Trump’s hostage envoy Adam Boehler, who warned the Iraqi prime minister in February that the latter would be deemed complicit if Tsurkov was not immediately released.

“Elizabeth Tsurkov is a Princeton student held hostage in Iraq!” Adam Boehler tweeted, adding that Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani “consistently made false promises to the prior administration about releasing her.”

“BUT NOW [US President Donald Trump] IS ON TO YOU!” he added, warning that if Tsurkov “does not come home NOW then [Sudani] is either incapable and should be FIRED or worse COMPLICIT.”

Tsurkov, who had likely entered Iraq on her Russian passport, had traveled to the country as part of her doctoral studies after previously traveling to the country and other Arab countries in the region.

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

In the video, Tsurkov mentioned the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip, which raged after the Palestinian terror group launched its October 7, 2023, onslaught.