What is happening to the jihadi brides who joined Islamic State?
Female recruits are being used as suicide attackers as the terror group battles to hold onto strongholds in Syria and Iraq.
Wednesday 19 July 2017 07:33, UK
Islamic State are facing the fall of their so-called caliphate in Syria and Iraq, with key strongholds being recaptured from the militants.
But, as the terror group loses territory across the Middle East, what is happening to the Western girls who travelled to marry IS fighters?
Following the recent liberation of Mosul, once the de facto capital of the caliphate, families told how female foreign recruits stood guard over them as the jihadists staged their desperate bid to hold the Iraqi city.
Brandishing Kalashnikovs and wearing suicide vests, the women reportedly threatened to kill both their captives and themselves if any tried to flee.
Others were said to have been deployed in an all-female squad of snipers as IS fought against Iraqi forces.
IS expert Charlie Winter said there had been a "paradigm shift" in the group's use of fighters, amid many reports of female IS recruits being captured wearing suicide belts.
The King's College London academic told Sky News: "There have been a lot more reports of women engaging in suicide operations, which had been utterly forbidden by IS."
Mr Winter said those Western women in Syria and Iraq who have not already fled are now "fairly stuck with the group as it has been very difficult to cross borders for a very long time".
"There's a huge amount of pressure on foreign members of the group, in terms of their ability to travel, their ability to leave - IS doesn't want foreign members to leave," he added.
With dozens of foreign females arrested in recent weeks, Mr Winter expects many more will be captured if the group's Syrian stronghold Raqqa falls after Mosul.
"I'd imagine there will be a significant number that will be captured, a significant number that will be killed," he said.
Mr Winter said that little is known about British female jihadis in Syria and Iraq, but revealed foreigners could "potentially" remain with IS for years to come.
He said: "Mosul falling or Raqqa falling doesn't really spell the end of IS, as they have been moving resources to areas in eastern Syria.
"While IS is on the precipice, it's not an existential threat. They are well aware things are going according to how they will have forecast."
Around 850 Britons are believed to have travelled to Syria to support or fight with jihadist groups, with security services reported to have identified 350 as having returned to the UK.
Those back in the UK will have been assessed and either put on watch lists or judged to have become disillusioned with extremism and pose no risk.
Similarly, about 930 people - including children - left Germany in recent years to join jihadists, with one in five of them female.
There are an estimated 1,700 French people who have fought in Iraq and Syria, out of around 6,000 from Europe.
Most travelled from the UK, Germany and France.
LINDA WENZEL
One teenager arrested in Mosul is reported to be 16-year-old German Linda Wenzel.
Apparently found under rubble in the war-torn city, Miss Wenzel travelled to Turkey in July 2016 with the aim of reaching Iraq or Syria before security services lost track of her.
She was described as an IS sniper hiding with 30 women, some wearing suicide vests.
Five more of the women are said to have been German while, 10 days ago, the French wife of a suspected IS fighter and her four children were found in Mosul.
SALLY JONES
British jihadi Sally Jones, from Kent, recently claimed to be desperate to leave IS-held Raqqa and return to the UK.
A friend of hers told Sky News the former punk rocker, whose British jihadi husband was killed by a US drone strike in 2015, wants to return home but is being prevented from doing so.
She has been accused of plotting attacks in the UK, including against the Queen.
The US envoy to the international coalition battling IS, Brett McGurk, has said all 3,000 to 3,500 foreign fighters in Raqqa will die there.
BETHNAL GREEN GIRLS
One woman who is already believed to have died in Raqqa is Kadiza Sultana, one of three British schoolgirls who travelled to Syria.
The trio married IS fighters, with Sultana said to have died in a Russian airstrike in May last year.
The fate of her companions Shamima Begum and Amira Abase is unknown.
AQSA MAHMOOD
The Bethnal Green schoolgirls were reported to have been indoctrinated by al-Khansaa, an all-female religious enforcement unit, in which Glaswegian Aqsa Mahmood was believed to be a prominent figure.
In 2015, the UK Government asked the United Nations to impose a travel ban on Mahmood, who was 19 when she left Britain, and freeze her assets due to her promotion of IS propaganda online.
Her family pleaded with her to come home but also condemned a blog post she wrote praising terror attacks in France and Tunisia.