’White Widow’ and son, 12, die in drone attack: report

SALLY Jones, a British jihadi who recruited online for the Islamic State group, has been killed in Syria by a US drone along with her 12-year-old son, The Sun newspaper reports.

A convert to Islam from southern England, Jones was nicknamed the “White Widow” by the British press after her jihadi husband Junaid Hussain, also an IS militant, was killed by a drone in 2015.

Quoting a British intelligence source who had been briefed by US counterparts, The Sun reported on Thursday that Jones, pictured, and her son had been killed in June close to Syria’s border with Iraq, as she was trying to flee the IS stronghold of Raqqa.

US intelligence chiefs were quoted as saying they could not be 100 per cent certain that Jones had been killed as there was no way of recovering any DNA from the ground, but they were “confident” she was dead.

Her son JoJo was presumed to be dead, too, although he was not an intended target, according to The Sun.

British Prime Minister Theresa May’s spokesman declined to comment directly on the report, as did Defence Secretary Michael Fallon.

“If you are a British national in Iraq or Syria, and if you have chosen to fight for Daesh, an illegal organisation that is preparing and inspiring terror attacks on our streets, then you’ve made yourself a legitimate target,” Mr Fallon said.