A 16-year-old German girl who left her home town near Dresden to travel to Syria has reportedly been found in Mosul, Iraq.
Linda Wenzel "ran away from home" a year ago after her parents separated, the Daily Mail reports. She is believed to have formed an online relationship with a man belonging to Islamic State.
Wenzel was found last week, hiding in Mosul tunnels built by the terrorists, alongside weapons and suicide vests, Russia Today reports, citing a Die Welt story.
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She has been handed over to US troops in Iraq for questioning, the Daily Telegraph says. It adds she was found with a group of 20 female fighters, including Russian, Turkish, Canadian and Chechen women.
Wenzel grew up in a Protestant family and reportedly had not shown any interest in religion until shortly before her disappearance. Friends say she converted to Islam in early 2016, began learning Arabic and started taking the Koran to school.
Police believe she was radicalised online by a Muslim man who persuaded her to travel to Syria last summer. She is said to have used fake documents to travel to Istanbul, Turkey, where police lost track of her.
Vian Dakhil, of the Council of Representatives of Iraq, confirmed Wenzel's identity on Twitter and said she had been a sniper for IS. He also claimed her mother "didn’t deny" the girl in the photo was Wenzel.
Mosul has been gripped by intense fighting in recent months as Iraqi forces sought to retake control of the city after it fell to IS in 2014. Iraq's government declared victory in the city earlier this month.
Although accurate statistics are difficult to obtain, an estimated 930 people, 20 per cent of them female, have left Germany to fight in Syria or Iraq, according to Hans-Georg Maassen, president of Germany's domestic security agency.
A German security report says young people can easily be indoctrinated to “develop a readiness to consequently obey the order to kill unbelievers”.
The Guardian reports "up to 30,000 foreign fighters are thought to have crossed into Syria" to fight alongside IS, with the US government estimating as many as 25,000 of them have since been killed.
About 850 Britons are thought to have joined the group in Syria. Anyone returning to the UK who is thought to have fought for IS in Syria may face life in prison under the Terrorism Act.
