British ISIS family including grandmother captured hiding among refugees in Syria
A British ISIS family including a grandmother, her two adult daughters and their children have been captured hiding among refugees in Syria, it has been claimed.
The two sisters, both in their 20s, and their mother are said to have fled from the town of al-Shafaa in Deir Ezzor, Syria, last week.
They were travelling with young children and were among other wives of ISIS fanatics as well as local refugees, according to Kurdish sources.
The family has since been sent to a detention camp in the north eastern Syrian town of al-Hawl.
Another British woman, Zara Iqbal, from East London, has been at the same camp for a number of months, according to The Telegraph.
A Kurdish source told the newspaper: ‘They claim, as all the women do, that they were brought here by their husbands and that they have been trying to escape Daesh.’
A total of 13 Britons are now being held by the Syrian Democratic Forces over suspected links to ISIS.
News of the latest capture comes a day after it emerged that eight foreign jihadists – including a 16-year-old American – had been seized during battles with ISIS in Syria.
The eight, detained on Sunday and Monday, also included a German and a Russian, the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) said in a statement.
The Kurdish force say the group were plotting an attack on civilians.
They identified the alleged terrorists as Soulay Noah Su (aka Abu Souleiman al-Amriki), a 16-year-old American and Lucas Glass (aka Abu Ibrahim al-Almani), a 31-year-old German.
They listed the names of the fighters along with their Arabic aliases alongside their mugshots, according to Rudaw.
Syrian Democratic Forces – who fight alongside the YPG – had announced on Monday they had detained two Americans among five foreign jihadists.
The two Americans, two Pakistanis and an Irishman were part of a cell planning an attack on civilians fleeing the jihadist group’s last bastion, the SDF said.
The force, which receives key support in the air and on the ground from the US military, said in a statement that the jihadists were captured on December 30.
The Kurds in northeastern Syria say they hold around 1,000 foreign jihadist fighters, as well as 550 foreign women and 1,200 children who lived with them.
The SDF, backed by coalition air strikes, has achieved major gains since the launch four months ago of an offensive to root out IS from the last rump of the once-sprawling ‘caliphate’ it proclaimed in 2014.
They have cornered ISIS into a shrinking strip of land east of Syria’s Euphrates River around the town of Hajin – one of their largest remaining strongholds which was captured last month.
The jihadists are clinging bitterly to a handful of villages in this river valley and have pledged to fight to the death.
The largest ones are Sousa and Bahgouz, following the capture on Saturday of Al-Shaafa, according to the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights war monitor.
Source: Daily Mail
