Kurdish forces say they've rescued a Swedish teen held in Iraq

A Kurdish peshmerga soldier.
(Image credit: John Moore/Getty Images)

The Kurdistan Region Security Council announced Tuesday it rescued a 16-year-old Swedish girl from the Islamic State in Mosul, Iraq.

Swedish media reports that the girl and her boyfriend were persuaded to travel in June first to Syria and then to Mosul by an ISIS operative in Sweden, and eventually she became a captive of the group. She was pregnant when she arrived, and it's been reported that she gave birth to a son in November. The Kurdish forces reportedly rescued her on Feb. 17, and said she is currently in the Kurdistan region and will soon be transferred to Swedish authorities. A senior official told Agence France-Presse the operation was carried out "secretly in the center of Mosul" without "clashes or the arrest of any gunmen."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.