White Widow Sally Jones vowed to die fighting with so-called Islamic State, friend told ITV News

• Video report by ITV News security editor Rohit Kachroo

British terror recruiter Sally Jones had vowed to stay in Syria and die fighting with so-called Islamic State, a friend held by US-backed Kurdish forces told ITV News in July.

ITV News now understands Jones, who was high on the UK's most wanted list and popularly known as the "White Widow", was killed in a drone strike the previous month close to the border with Iraq.

Her apparent death in June was first reported by The Sun on Thursday.

Jones' friend spoke to ITV News Correspondent John Ray in July at a desert camp outside IS's former stronghold Raqqa that held the wives and daughters of captured or killed Isis fighters.

The woman, who called herself Aisha, described her English friend as a woman "from London" with "green eyes and blonde" hair and then named her.

Aisha said Jones had fled towards the Iraqi border but would not leave the caliphate.

"She (told) me she will stay here until she die, she don't want to go anywhere," she said.

Aisha had praised the British Muslim convert's commitment to the jihadist cause.

"I am full of admiration for her. Muslims from the outside are not like us," she said.

"A convert will catch Islam tightly and not let it go. Because she is a Muslim she will come here and never leave."

Jones, who was born in London and grew up in Kent, had fled for Syria in 2013 with her husband Junaid Hussain and 11-year-old son Joe "JoJo" Dixon, who later appeared in the terror group's propaganda videos.

Hussain died in a 2015 drone strike whereupon Jones tweeted of her pride her "husband was killed by the biggest enemy of Allah".

She had used her social media account to repeatedly urge terror attacks on her homeland.