Where are the rest of Australia’s ISIS brides? What we know about remaining women who left to join IS

As debate intensifies over 11 Australian women seeking to return from Syria with their 23 children, a broader question has emerged: What happened to the rest of the women who left Australia to join Islamic State at the height of the terror group’s power?

More than a decade after the first departures, this cohort is coming into sharper view. Some are dead, some have returned and a handful remain unaccounted for. Here is what we know.

Reported to be dead

Several Australian women who travelled to Syria and Iraq to join Islamic State have been reported or confirmed dead.

Some were killed in coalition air strikes between 2014 and 2019. Others reportedly died in camps amid deteriorating humanitarian conditions. Among them are:

Tara Nettleton, the wife of notorious IS fighter Khaled Sharrouf, died of illness in 2015.

Dullel Kassab, who travelled to Syria with two young children, was killed in a 2015 airstrike.

Amira Karroum, 21, was reported to have died in Aleppo in 2014.

Shadi Jabar Khalil Mohammad, sister of Curtis Cheng shooter Farhad Jabar, left Australia the day before her brother’s attack and died in 2016 under the IS name Umm Issa al-Amrikiah.

Fauzia Khamal Bacha, wife of Yasin Rizvic, died after travelling to Syria; three of her orphaned children were repatriated in 2019.

Sydney teenager Hafsa Mohamed, who travelled to Syria with friend Hodan Abby, has also been reported as having died.

2019: Orphan repatriations

Australia’s first major extraction from Syria came in June, 2019.

The Morrison Government repatriated eight orphaned children connected to ISIS e fighters Khaled Sharrouf and Yasin Rizvic after their parents were killed. No adult women were brought back.

Those returned included Sharrouf’s daughter Hoda, his daughter Zaynab and her three children — Ayesha, Fatima and a third child — as well as his teenage son Hamzeh. Two children of Yasin Rizvic were also repatriated as part of the operation.

No adult women were brought back.

In October 2022, the Albanese government repatriated four Australian women and 13 children from al-Roj camp in northeast Syria, marking the first return of adult women since the fall of Islamic State.

The women were identified as Mariam Dabboussy, Mariam Raad, Shayma Assaad and Bassima Assaad.

Dabboussy, a Western Sydney woman, travelled to Syria in 2015 with her husband, IS fighter Khaled Zahab, and returned to Australia with her three children.

Mariam Raad, the widow of senior Australian IS figure Muhammad Zahab, was repatriated with her four children.

Shayma Assaad came back with her four children, while her mother Bassima Assaad returned with two daughters.

Bassima’s husband, Ahmad Assaad, a former Crown Security employee, remains jailed in Syria.

Shayma’s husband, Sydney tradesman-turned-IS fighter Mohammed Noor Masri, has been detained by Kurdish authorities since 2019.

Upon arrival in Sydney, the women issued a public statement expressing regret for travelling to ISIS territory and said they were “willing to do whatever is asked” by authorities, acknowledging they could face control orders, monitoring or prosecution as security agencies assessed their cases.

Since then, those women have largely remained out of public view.

Stripped of citizenship

Zehra Duman, an Australian-Turkish woman from Melbourne, travelled to Syria in her late teens and became one of the most publicly visible Australian women linked to Islamic State through her prolific social media posts.

She was widowed when her husband, Melbourne man Mahmoud Abdullatif, was killed in Syria in 2013. Duman later had two children.

She was stripped of her Australian citizenship under anti-terror laws and is now understood to be living in Turkey.

2025: Flying under the radar

In September 2025, two Australian women and four children quietly returned to Australia from Syria without fanfare.

The Australian Government says it did not repatriate or help the group return to Australia and insists they made their own personal travel arrangements.

The group fled Al-Hawl camp, travelled more than 500km to Lebanon, and returned to Australia via a commercial flight to Melbourne.

The group underwent identity checks and security screening before being issued travel documents. Two of the children, born in Syria, applied for Australian citizenship.

Authorities confirmed their arrival but refused to disclose their identities.

The episode demonstrated that Australians can return without a publicly announced government extraction and raised the possibility that some individuals assumed to be “still over there” may already be back.

2026: The 11 women seeking to return

This month, the issue reignited when 34 Australians – 11 women and 23 children – attempted to leave al-Roj camp but were turned back during transit.

The group was reported to have made it only a short distance from the camp before being forced back due to documentation and border clearance issues.

Among them are women who travelled to Syria as teenagers, others who left as young mothers and several who now have Australian-citizen children.

One woman from the broader cohort is subject to a Temporary Exclusion Order, though her identity has not been publicly confirmed.

The 11 women are reported to be:

Nesrine Zahab, now in her early 30s, left Sydney in her early 20s. In a 2019 Four Corners interview, she claimed she did not realise she was entering Syria. She later married Australian IS fighter Ahmed Merhi, now imprisoned in Baghdad. Her son Abdul Rahman was born in al-Roj in 2018.

Sumaya Zahab, in her early 30s, is the sister of former Sydney maths teacher Muhammad Zahab, who was killed in an airstrike in 2018.

Aminah Zahab, the family matriarch, followed her son to Syria and later described the move as a tragic error. Speaking from Al-Hol camp in 2019, she said the family had placed “too much trust” in their children and described dire conditions.

Zeinab Ahmed, from Melbourne, has a young daughter and was widowed in 2016 when her husband Dawod Elmir was killed. Speaking to the ABC in 2025, she said Australian officials conducted health and DNA checks in 2022 before extracting four families and never returned.

Kawsar Abbas, in her early 50s, is the wife of Mohammed Ahmad, who ran a Syria-focused charity later investigated by Australian authorities. He has denied supporting IS. The family says they became trapped after travelling for a wedding in 2014.

Zahra Ahmad, their eldest daughter, later became the second wife of Muhammad Zahab. She told SBS in 2024 that women in the family had “no choice” once male relatives pledged allegiance to IS.

“We are forced to suffer for the decisions that other people made,” she said.

Kirsty Rosse-Emile, 30, left Melbourne in 2014 at age 19 with her much older husband Nabil Kadmiry. She remains in al-Roj with two surviving children. Her father disputes her claim that she was misled about travelling.

Janai Safar, who left Australia in 2015 with her cousin, said from detention that she chose to go and did not want her son raised in a non-Islamic country. She married an IS operative in Raqqa. Her father says she ultimately wants to return.

Hodan Abby, who travelled to Syria as a teenager, gave birth to a daughter who later suffered shrapnel injuries. She reportedly indicated willingness to accept a control order if allowed to return.

Kawsar Kanj and Hyam Raad are also on the list but little is known about them.

The remainder

Only a small number of Australian-linked ISIS brides remain unaccounted for.

Roughly six women previously reported to have travelled to Syria now fall into a grey area, with their current whereabouts unclear.

Some may still be in detention camps, others may have died without formal confirmation, some could have moved elsewhere, and it is possible a small number have already returned to Australia quietly and without public announcement.

Names in that grey category include:

Sara Nobakhti-Afshar, last reported in al-Roj; Jasmina Milovanov, who left two children in Australia; Rayyan Hamdoush, detained in Al-Hol; the Australian wife of Jamil Ahmed Shqeir; Swedish national Fatin al-Mandlawi, whose child’s father was reportedly an Australian fighter: and Janai Safar’s cousin Aylam reportedly married Lebanese IS commander Tarek Khayat, alleged to have been involved in an airline bombing plot. Her fate is unclear.