A medical student who joined the Islamic State is thought to have become the first British female recruit to be killed in an air strike in Iraq.

Rowan Kamal Zine El Abidine, 22, was hit in a strike on Thursday. Her husband and young daughter are understood to have survived, according to reports.

She had been studying dentistry at the University of Medical Sciences and Technology (UMST) in Khartoum, Sudan, when she left for Syria with eight other British-Sudanese pupils early last year.

Although the students do not appear to have volunteered to fight, their families in the UK fear they have been “brainwashed” into helping treat wounded jihadists.

It is thought they were lured to Syria by fellow student, British-Palestinian Mohammed Fakhri Al-Khabass.

Khabass is said to have persuaded more than a dozen Britons and a dozen other foreigners from the Sudanese university to go to Syria.