A former Miss Iraq beauty queen has fled the country after receiving death threats, which followed a spate of killings of high-profile women.

Shimaa Qasim Abdulrahman, who was awarded the crown in 2015, said she has left for Jordan after receiving a message from a man purporting to be an Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) member reading “you’re next”.

"I was threatened with murder. My life was in danger. The killing of this many people scared me,” she told local Kurdish news site Rudaw. “I wasn’t comfortable living there anymore and that is why I left Iraq and came to Jordan.”

It came just a week after fellow Iraqi beauty queen and social media star Tara Fares was shot dead in her car in Baghdad on September 27. In the weeks before that, Suad al-Ali, a women’s rights activist in the southern city of Basra, was also gunned down as she walked to her car.

Dr Rafeef al-Yassiri, a plastic surgeon dubbed "Iraq's Barbie," died under mysterious circumstances.