AN ENGLISH SCHOOLGIRL who travelled to Syria to join the Islamic State has reportedly been killed in an airstrike.
Kadiza Sultana made headlines in February 2015 when she left her home in Bethnal Green in London with two friends and travelled to Turkey, before travelling on to Syria.
The trio of schoolgirls became some of IS’ most infamous recruits, and were said to have married other foreign IS recruits since they had travelled over.
Now, ITV News reports that the 17-year-old was killed in an airstrike on an IS compound in Raqqa in May.
The station reports that, according to her family, Kadiza had become disillusioned with life in Syria and had been planning to escape before she was killed.
The reports of her death are unverified as of yet, but her family confirmed the details to ITV in a statement. It is thought that it was a Russian airstrike that killed the teenager.
Her sister, Halima, said:
We were expecting this in a way. But at least we know she is in a better place.
We do not wish her name to come up in the headlines again… She is gone and we would like to respect her wishes.
“I feel scared”
ITV News released excerpts of phone calls between Kadiza and her sister as they were trying to plan her escape.
In one conversation, Kadiza said:
I don’t have a good feeling, like I feel scared. If something goes wrong that’s it.
Kadiza’s family’s lawyer at the time of her disappearance, Tasnime Akunjee, said that she had quickly become disillusioned with life with IS after she had travelled over.
He was working with her family to engineer a possible escape plan before the news of her death.
“You would move heaven and earth to get any child back from a danger zone, and this family had done all they could and stretched every sinew to get their daughter, their sibling back home,” he told ITV News.
But there is always the situation when you have a person in a warzone that the worst could happen, and unfortunately it just wasn’t possible to have her home before the risk caught up with her.
In a statement to The Guardian, the British Foreign Office said that it could not confirm the report of Kadiza’s death.
“As all UK consular services there are suspended, it is extremely difficult to confirm the status and whereabouts of British nationals in Syria,” it said.
800 British nationals are thought to have travelled to Syria or Iraq to join IS or other militant groups; it is believed that as many as 400 may have since returned.
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