A teenage girl whose image was used as a recruitment tool for the Islamic State was reportedly killed while trying to escape the terrorist group’s grip in Syria, according to Austrian newspapers.
Samra Kesinovic and a friend fled Vienna in April 2014, reportedly leaving a note for their families that read, “Don’t look for us. We will serve Allah and we will die for him.”
Ms. Kesinovic’s journey to IS territory is one example in a series of reports underscoring the lure of the Islamic State for women. In slowly growing global numbers, women and girls are choosing to abandon western “luxuries and freedoms” in exchange for becoming wives, mothers, and Internet recruiters for the terrorist group, reports The Christian Science Monitor.
It appears that the number of men leaving Europe and the US for Syria is “continuing at a steady plateau,” yet “the number of Western women headed to Syria has grown exponentially within the past year,” according to The Monitor, which notes that of the 4,500 foreign fighters believed to have joined IS by early 2015, about 550 of them were women.
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