A female Kurdish fighter who became a poster girl for the
Kobane resistance movement after a picture of her making a peace sign was retweeted
thousands of times on Twitter has reportedly been beheaded by Isis.
The woman, known by the pseudonym Rehana, was celebrated as
a symbol of hope for the embattled Syrian border town after a journalist
tweeted a picture of her making a 'V-sign', claiming that she'd personally
killed 100 Isis militants.
The message was retweeted over 5,000 times, but there are
now claims Rehana, who fought for the Kurdish YPJ, or Women's Defense Unit, may
have been killed after gruesome pictures began circulating on Twitter of an
Isis fighter purportedly holding aloft her head.
Perched on the other side of the Turkish border, the Syrian
town of Kobane has been under an intense assault by Isis, or the so-called
Islamic State, for more than a month. The town - surrounded on the east, south
and west by Isis - is being defended by Kurdish forces in Syria.
Among those fighters are thousands of women, an unusual
phenomenon in the Muslim world in which warfare is often associated with
manhood.
In April, Kurdish fighters created all-female combat units
that have grown to include more than 10,000 women.
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