Security forces arrest 5 German IS female fighters in Mosul
Iraqi security forces. File photo.
Mosul (IraqiNews.com) Iraqi Security forces have arrested female foreign Islamic State (IS) fighters, including five Germans, in the city of Mosul, an officer from the counter-terrorism forces revealed on Tuesday, according to Germany’s Die Welt newspaper.
The officer said that the female fighters were arrested last Thursday in the Old City of Mosul, noting that they were hiding in in a tunnel built by the IS and were wearing suicide vests.
The arrested female fighters had come from Germany, Russia, Turkey, Canada, Libya, the Caucasus and Syria, according to the report.
The newspaper claimed that a 16-year-old student, Linda W, from the German federal state of Saxony was among the five German women. Linda, who had converted to Islam, joined IS in the summer of 2016 after travelling from Frankfurt to Syria through Istanbul.
In the same context, a Yazidi member of the Council of Representatives of Iraq, Vian Dakhil, confirmed the identity of the German teenager after posting a photo of her on twitter, claiming that Linda was an IS sniper.
More than 930 Islamists from Germany had traveled to Syria and Iraq over the past years, according to the Saxony’s State Criminal Police Office (LKA).
On July 10, the Iraqi Prime Minister, Haider al-Abadi, declared victory over IS in the city of Mosul, ending an eight-month campaign backed by a U.S.-led coalition and paramilitary forces, which has displaced more than 900.000 civilians.
The victory in Mosul also means an effective collapse of the Islamic State’s self-styled “caliphate” declared from Mosul’s Old City by the group’s supreme leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.