A Christian woman kidnapped and used as a sex slave by ISIS was saved by a rescue team posing as jihadists who bought her back for £20,000.

Rita Habib, 30, was captured in northern Iraq three years ago, marking the beginning of her horrific ordeal.

Raped by numerous men, all of whom had wives and children, Ms Habib was sold from one member of the extremist network to another in an endless cycle of abuse.

But she has now been reunited with her father after the fifth person to buy her handed her back to her family in a courageous rescue that could have killed him.

Ms Habib told Kurdistan 24: 'They did evil things to us. They beat us and raped us.

'The worst of all was girls aged nine who were raped. Girls would be sold for 4,000 to 15,000 dollars.'

An only child with a widowed father, Ms Habib had travelled to Turkey in 2014 to try to register them both for asylum as ISIS stormed the Middle East.

But by the time she returned in August with the documents they needed, ISIS had fought their way into the town of Qaraqosh in northern Iraq.

Families were separated and Ms Habib was taken to Mosul, where she was told she would be used for prisoner exchanges.

Instead, she was bought by an Iraqi man and held for 18 months before being sold on to two Saudi Arabians in Raqqa and then a Syrian man.

It was then that two men from the Shlama Foundation, an Iraqi Christian group, stepped in pretending to be jihadists wanting to buy a sex slave.

They were reportedly alerted to Ms Habib's situation by her father who had also been captured in Qaraqosh and later freed.

The pair paid £20,000 to buy her, as well as purchasing a Yazidi woman she was being held with - a move which, if discovered, would have seen the rescuers killed.

Ms Habib told reporters: 'They did evil things to us. They beat us and raped us'

Ms Habib embraces her father in Arbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, three years after she was kidnapped and sold into sex slavery

For days afterwards, Ms Habib and her fellow captive were unaware they would be leaving the violence and abuse which had marred their lives for years.

But when the Yazidi woman asked what was happening, one of the men told them: 'We are not ISIS. We have been paid to bring you home.

'We are trying to find a way to save you.'

Ms Habib spent four months in a women's refuge, then last week she met her father in Arbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, in a tearful reunion.