A TEENAGE girl who ran away from her Austrian home to join IS has reportedly been killed after trying to flee the terrorist capital of Raqqa.

Samra Kesinovic, 17, went to Syria in April 2014 with her 16-year-old friend Sabina Selimovic, where they became propaganda poster girls for the Islamist group.

Now several Austrian newspapers are claiming Samra has been beaten to death, citing insider sources and an interview with a Tunisian woman who lived with the pair before escaping.

Speculation about the fate of the girls has been spreading ever since a United Nations official said earlier this year that one of the girls had definitely died in Syria.

Some reports suggest both are now dead, with the UN’s David Scharia saying: “Both were recruited by Islamic State. One was killed in the fighting in Syria, the other has disappeared.”

Authorities know that the two teenage girls initially travelled to the Turkish capital Ankara and then into the southern Turkish region of Adana.

Then they believe the two crossed into Syria by foot and then married IS fighters, with the two couples initially living in the same room.

The Austrian government has so far refused to comment on individual cases.

Kesinovic and Selimovic grew up in Vienna where they became accustomed to talking to whoever they wanted, saying whatever they pleased and wearing whatever clothes they liked. In April, they left a note of their parents which read: “Don’t look for us. We will serve Allah — and we will die for him.”

Reports emerged in recent weeks that the teens had experienced a change of heart and wanted to come home.

It was also claimed the pair had married and had become pregnant to IS fighters.

In an interview from inside Islamic State in October, Selimovic blasted claims that she wants to return home in an interview believed to be held at gunpoint by her IS-devoted husband.

“Here I can really be free,” 15-year-old Sabina Selimovic told French magazine Paris Match via SMS text messages. “I can practise my religion.”

“I couldn’t do that in Vienna,” she added.

Under the watchful eye of her jihadist husband, Sabina spoke to the weekly publication using text messages and claimed she was not pregnant as previously reported. She also admitted that she was in fact loving her new-found life in the war-torn region, Central European News reports.

“I like to eat,” she continued. “The food here is very similar to Austria even if it’s mainly halal food. You can get ketchup here, Nutella and cornflakes.”

But experts back in Vienna claimed the entire interview is just one big publicity stunt used to try and rebuild the image of the Islamic State amid recent reports the girls wished to return to their families in Austria.

“If they really want it to be believable that the girls are now claiming they don’t want to come home, they should let them give the interview on neutral territory where it’s possible to see that they aren’t being threatened by a gun,” an Austrian security insider told CEN at the time.

“If the claim they want to come home is untrue, they have the opportunity to walk back into Syria.”

Authorities analysed the transcript of the interview and were almost completely certain that Sabina would have been ordered and threatened to retract anything she had previously said in order to keep the flow of Islamic State recruits steady, according to CEN.

Sabina said when she and Samra first made their way into the Syrian terrorist stronghold, they travelled with nothing more than the clothes on their backs.

Upon their arrival, the two girls were immediately married to a pair of jihadist fighters whom they lived with for two months under the same roof, she said. The girls eventually moved out with each of their husbands into separate homes, with Sabina and her “soldier” living in a 3 bedroom apartment.

- This story originally appeared in The Sun

Additional reporting by Chris Peres, The New York Post