Iraqi Kurdish troops rescue Swedish teen from ISIS

IRBIL, IRAQ— Iraqi Kurdish authorities said Tuesday their troops rescued a Swedish teenager from the Islamic State group near the extremist-controlled city of Mosul this month, while a TV station broadcast an interview with the girl in which she described how she came with her boyfriend to Iraq last year.

A statement from the regional government said the rescue operation by the Kurdish anti-terrorist forces took place on Feb.17 near Mosul, 360 kilometres northwest of Baghdad.

The statement identified the young woman by name, saying the 16-yearold from the Swedish town of Boras “was misled” by an Islamic State member in Sweden to travel to Syria and later to Mosul.

Swedish authorities and the teenager’s family had contacted the Iraqi Kurdish government and asked for help in locating and rescuing the girl.

Iraqi Kurdish officials in Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish semi-autonomous region in northern Iraq, declined to provide more details.

But a local TV station, K24, described the rescue as a “unique military operation” and late Tuesday night broadcast an exclusive interview with the teen.

The girl recounts how she stopped going to school at the age of 14 and met her boyfriend that year. At first, all was fine, she says, but then he started speaking more and more about “ISIS videos.”

“I didn’t know what ISIS means, or Islam,” she said.

The boyfriend convinced her to “go to ISIS in Syria” and the pair left Sweden by train on May 31, 2015, she said, recounting their subsequent journey across Europe until they reached Turkey and crossed into Syria and, from there, they ended up in the Iraqi city of Mosul.

After a while, she got a cellphone and contacted her mother, saying she wanted to come back to Sweden.