A British schoolgirl who travelled to Syria to join Islamic State with two teenage friends is feared to have been killed in an air strike.
The mother of Amira Abase, who was just 15 when she fled her London home to join IS in 2015, has told friends that she understands her daughter died almost a year ago.
As well as being told by informed sources that her daughter is believed to have been killed, Fetia Hussen lost the mobile phone app communication she had with Amira last summer.
British teenage girls Shamima Begun, Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana walk through security at Gatwick airport before they boarded a flight to Turkey on February 17, 2015
The Foreign Office and Scotland Yard refused to comment on the teenager’s fate, but several sources have told The Mail on Sunday that police and counter-terrorism officials believe she has been killed.
Haunting images of Amira and her friends Shamima Begum, then 15, and Kadiza Sultana, then 16, passing through security checks at Gatwick Airport on the first stage of their journey to Syria and the clutches of IS made headlines around the world. The girls and Sharmeena Begum, 16, who had fled to Syria two months earlier, were all grade-A pupils at Bethnal Green Academy in East London.
Their radicalisation provided chilling evidence of the terror network’s ability to recruit young followers in the UK.
The trio flew first to the Turkish city of Istanbul before crossing the border into Syria. Their families, who were critical of the police for questioning the three after Sharmeena Begum’s disappearance but deeming them not to be at risk, travelled to Turkey in a doomed bid to bring their daughters home.
In 2016, it was reported that Kadiza had been killed in a Russian air strike on Raqqa, then the de facto capital of the IS caliphate.
It is thought that Kadiza, who like her schoolmates was married off to jihadis after arriving in Syria, was secretly planning to escape but feared the barbaric punishment that would be meted out if she was caught. The fates of Shamima Begum and Sharmeena Begum (who are unrelated) are unknown.
Amira Abase from Bethnal Green in East London, one of the three schoolgirls who ran away to Syria
Our report on Amira’s reaction to the Tunisian terror attack in which she mocked the victims
Friends of Fetia Hussen say she believes her daughter, who married Abdullah Elmir, an 18-year-old Australian jihadi, has died, but clings to the faint hope that she is wrong. Both Fetia Hussen and Amira’s father, Abase Hussen, declined to comment.
Four months after Amira fled to Syria, The Mail on Sunday revealed how she had tried to groom an undercover reporter posing as a teenage girl. When the reporter told her about the terror attack at a tourist resort near the Tunisian city of Sousse a few days earlier, she replied: ‘LOL [laugh out loud].’ Informed of the death toll of 38, including 30 Britons, Amira wrote: ‘Wow, damned that’s a lot.’
Elmir, nicknamed the Ginger Jihadi, then threatened the undercover reporter for contacting his wife and warned of attacks in Britain by IS. He was killed in a drone strike in December 2015.
Three months after Amira travelled to Syria, it emerged that her father had been to a rally held by the extremist group Al-Muhajiroun. It was also attended by hate preacher Anjem Choudary and Michael Adebowale, now serving life for the murder of Lee Rigby in South-East London in 2013. Mr Hussen took Amira to two other Islamist rallies before she left for Syria.
He has denied any involvement in terrorism or extremism.
A Foreign Office spokesman said: ‘The UK has advised against all travel to Syria and against all travel to large parts of Iraq, as all UK consular services are suspended in Syria and greatly limited in Iraq.’