by WorldTribune Staff, August 12, 2016

A 17-year-old British girl who joined Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL) last year is said to have been killed in a Russian airstrike on the terror group’s de facto capital at Raqqa, Syria.

Kadiza Sultana was one of three London schoolgirls who made headlines last year when they fled their homes to join ISIL.

Sultana is believed to have been in a residential building in Raqqa when it was hit in May by a bomb thought to have been dropped by a Russian warplane, the British ITV News Channel reported on Aug. 11.

ITV News said that Sultana had become “disillusioned with life in the medieval terror state” and had been planning to return to Britain, adding that her relatives in London and contacts in Raqqa were working on an escape plan to get her out.

ITV quoted her sister, Halima, as saying: “We were expecting this, in a way. But at least we know she is in a better place.”

Then 16-year-old Sultana, along with Amira Abase and Shamima Begum, both 15 at the time, joined ISIL in February 2015 and became symbols of the terrorist organization’s ability to lure foreign women to cause.

A May 2015 report by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based research group that studies extremism, said ISIL had recruited an estimated 4,000 Western foreign fighters and migrants, including more than 550 women.

  British schoolgirl who joined ISIL believed killed in Russian airstrike, Kadiza Sultana, Raqqa, WorldTribune.com