WASHINGTON: An American woman who allegedly led an all-female Islamic State battalion in Syria has been charged with providing material support to a foreign terrorist group, the US Justice Department announced Saturday.

The woman, identified as Allison Fluke-Ekren, formerly of the US state of Kansas, had been named in a sealed criminal complaint filed in 2019 in a federal Virginia court, the government statement said.

Among other things, it said she had planned an attack on a US college campus and spoke of organizing a devastating attack on an American shopping mall.

The statement said the 42-year-old Fluke-Ekren — who has used at least five aliases — had been apprehended previously in Syria but was transferred into FBI custody on Friday.

She is expected to make her initial appearance before the US District Court for Eastern Virginia, in the Washington suburb of Alexandria, on Monday at 2:00 pm (1900 GMT), the statement said.