British schoolgirl "wants to go home"

One of three schoolgirls who left East London in 2015 to join the Islamic State group states that she has no regrets, but wishes to return to the UK.

In an interview with The Times, 19-year-old Shamima Begum today spoke of "decapitated heads" in bins – but said it "did not bother her."

Speaking in a refugee camp in Syria, she stated that she was nine months pregnant and that she wanted to go home for her baby.

She said that she had two other children who had died.

She also explained how one of her two clbadmates who had left the UK with her had died as a result of a bomb attack. The fate of the third girl is not clear.

"It was like a normal life"

Begum and Amira Abase, students at Bethnal Green Academy, were both 15, while Kadiza Sultana was 16 when they left the UK in February 2015.

They took the plane from Gatwick Airport to Turkey after announcing to their parents that they were leaving for the day. They then crossed the border into Syria.

After arriving in Raqqa, she stayed in a house with other future brides, she told The Times.

"I asked to marry an anglophone fighter between the ages of 20 and 25," she said.

Ten days later, she marries a 27-year-old Dutch convert to Islam.

She has been with him since then and the couple has escaped from Baghuz – the last territory of the group in eastern Syria – two weeks ago.

Her husband went to a group of Syrian fighters when they left. She is now one of 39,000 people living in a refugee camp in northern Syria.

Ms. Begum asked Times reporter Anthony Loyd if she had lived in the former Raqqa fortress in the IS group, living up to her aspirations. She replied, "Yes. Propaganda videos – it's a normal life.

"From time to time, there are bombs and stuff, but other than that …"

She said that seeing her first "sliced ​​head" in a trash can "not baffled me at all".

"It was a captured fighter, taken on the battlefield, an enemy of Islam.

"I only thought about what he would have done to a Muslim woman if he had had the opportunity," she said.

"I'm not the same stupid little 15-year-old schoolgirl who ran away from Bethnal Green four years ago," she told Loyd.

"I do not regret having come here."

"I always thought that we would die together".

But Ms. Begum said that "the oppression" had been a "shock" and that she felt that the "caliphate" of the IS was over.

"I do not have much hope, they are getting smaller," she said. "And there is so much oppression and corruption that I do not think they deserve the win."

She mentioned that her husband had been detained in a prison where men had been tortured.

A lawyer in Kadiza Sultana's family said in 2016 that she was reportedly killed during a Russian air strike.

Ms. Begum told The Times that her friend had died in a bomb attack on a house where "secret things" were going on in hiding.

She added, "I never thought that would happen.In the beginning, I was in denial because I always thought that if we were killed, we would be killed together. "

& # 39; Afraid that this baby will get sick & # 39;

Ms. Begum said that the loss of two children "was a shock, it came out of nowhere, it was so difficult."

Her first child, a girl, died at the age of one year and nine months and was buried in Baghuz a month ago.

His second child – the first to die – died three months ago, at the age of eight months, from an illness aggravated by malnutrition, the Times reports.

She told the newspaper that she had taken him to the hospital. "There was no medicine available and not enough medical staff," she said.

As a result, she declared that she was "really too protective" against her future child.

She added that this concern also contributed to her decision to leave Baghuz.

"I was weak," she says. "I could not bear the pain and hardship of staying on the battlefield.

"But I was also worried that the child I was about to give birth would die like my other children if I stayed."

She said that she was still afraid that her unborn baby would fall ill in the refugee camp.

"That's why I really want to go back to Britain because I know everything will be taken care of, at least as far as health is concerned," she said.

She said that she should give birth "any day now".

"I will do all that is necessary to be able to go home and live peacefully with my child."

ISIS lost control of most of the invaded territory, including its strongholds of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria.

However, fighting continues in northeastern Syria, where Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has captured dozens of foreign fighters in recent weeks.