German authorities are investigating whether a suspected Islamic State fighter seized by Iraqi forces in the war-torn city of Mosul is a 16-year-old German schoolgirl who disappeared from her parents’ home in Saxony a year ago after apparently being groomed by jihadist groups online.

The parents of Linda Wenzel have been searching in vain for their daughter since she vanished from her home in the village of Pulsnitz on 1 July last year after converting to Islam in secret. Video footage which appeared over the weekend seems to match images of Linda. Pictures show an exhausted, dust-covered girl who was arrested by Iraqi forces as part of a group of 20 female Isis supporters from Russia, Turkey, Canada, Libya and Syria who had barricaded themselves with guns and explosives in a tunnel underneath the ruins of Mosul’s Old City. An Iraqi commander in Mosul confirmed to the Guardian that all the arrested women had since been transferred to Baghdad.(theguardian)…[+]