Four years after leaving Germany to live under the Islamic State group, 19-year-old Leonora has fled the jihadists’ last bastion in eastern Syria and says it’s time to go home.
“I was a little bit naive,” she says in English, wearing a long billowing black robe, and a beige headscarf with white spots.
US-backed forces are fighting the last IS jihadists in a final shred of territory in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border, causing thousands of people to flee.
Just beyond the frontline village of Baghouz, Leonora and her two small children are among the thousands of men, women and children to have scrambled out this week.
The young German woman says she first came to Syria aged 15, just two
months after converting to Islam.
“After three days, I married my German husband,” she tells AFP, at a screening centre for the displaced run by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.
Leonora says she became the third wife of German jihadist Martin Lemke,
after he
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