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Swedish teenager rescued from Isis in Iraq Swedish teenager rescued from Isis in Iraq
(about 4 hours later)
Iraqi Kurdish troops have rescued a Swedish teenager from Islamic State near the extremist-controlled city of Mosul, the Kurdish regional government said. Kurdish troops in Iraq have rescued a Swedish teenager who is believed to have been held by Islamic State militants after her boyfriend tricked her into travelling to the region, Kurdish authorities have said.
The rescue operation by the Kurdish anti-terrorist forces took place on 17 February near Mosul, 225 miles (360km) north-west of Baghdad, it said. The girl disappeared from a foster home in Boras, east of Gothenburg, in May last year with her 19-year-old boyfriend, who was reported to be an Isis supporter. She was 15 at the time and pregnant. She reportedly gave birth to a son in November.
The official statement identified the girl by name, saying she was a 16-year-old from the town of Boras who had been “misled” by an Isis member in Sweden to travel to Syria and later to Mosul. A statement by the Kurdish regional government said its forces had rescued the girl, now 16, last week near Mosul, in northern Iraq, and that she was safe and set to return home. It did not say whether her infant son had been rescued with her.
It also said the Swedish authorities and the teenager’s family had contacted the Iraqi Kurdish government and asked for help in finding and rescuing the girl. A spokeswoman for Sweden’s foreign ministry said she had no information about the case.
The teenager was now in Iraqi Kurdish territory and being “provided the care afforded to her under international law”, the statement said, adding that she would be “transferred to Swedish authorities to return home once necessary arrangements” were made. The Kurdish statement, which named the teenager, said she had been “misled” by the boyfriend to travel to Sweden and then Mosul. It said the regional government had worked closely with Swedish authorities and the girl’s family to locate her.
The statement provided no details of the rescue operation and did not say whether the teen was mistreated while with Isis. It said she was now in Iraqi Kurdish territory, was being “provided the care afforded to her under international law”, and would be sent home as soon as possible.
Iraqi Kurdish officials in Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq, declined to provide more details. The AFP news agency quoted a senior Kurdish security official as saying the rescue took place “without clashes or the arrest of any gunmen”. The unnamed official added: “Swedish authorities were in continuous contact with the girl and organised the operation to rescue her in cooperation with regional authorities.”
Mosul was the first major Iraqi city to fall into the hands of Isis militants during their blitz in June 2014, when the group swept across vast areas in the country’s north and west. Swedish Radio said the teenager and her boyfriend were apparently captured by Isis in Syria in August. Swedish reports in October said the girl, then eight months pregnant, had been freed in Mosul and would be handed over to her family for a payment of about 300,000 Swedish kroner (£25,000).
Mosul remains under Isis control as Iraqi forces, aided by airstrikes carried out by the US-led international coalition, are battling to reclaim ground. Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces are fighting Isis militants to the north and east of the city. According to earlier reports, the teenager and her boyfriend travelled to Syria through Turkey and were recruited by a group linked to al-Qaida, before being captured by Isis in the Syrian city of Aleppo.
The boyfriend was reportedly forced to fight for the group. The girl talked to her family in Sweden via a mobile phone and said she was being held in Aleppo with a group of other women. She reportedly told her family that Isis had forcibly separated her from her boyfriend, and she was scared and wanted to return home. It remains unclear how she ended up in Mosul, around 400 miles from Aleppo.
Several hundred Swedish nationals are reported to have travelled to fight with Isis. According to one police official, almost half of these have come from Gothenburg. Speaking in November, Ulf Boström said this made the city the biggest single European contributor to the group as a proportion of its population.
Mosul was the first major Iraqi city to fall into the hands of Isis during a blitz in June 2014, when the group swept across vast areas in the country’s north and west.
The city remains under the group’s control while Iraqi forces, aided by airstrikes carried out by the US-led international coalition, are battling to reclaim ground. Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces are fighting Isis militants to the north and east of the city.