LONDON // British police are investigating whether three sisters and their nine children have travelled to join ISIL extremists in Syria.
The Dawood family, from Bradford, England, disappeared after going to Saudi Arabia for an Umrah pilgrimage. Police on Tuesday said they failed to return to the UK.
Khadija, Sugra and Zohra Dawood, all in their 30s, travelled to Medina with their children, aged 3 to 15, on May 28. They were due to return June 11, but broke off all contact June 9.
“One of the possibilities is they travelled to Turkey to travel to Syria,” Balaal Khan, the lawyer acting on behalf of the women’s husbands, said in a statement. “The suspicion, and main concern, is that the women have taken their children to Syria.”
Mr Khan said they may have tried to join a brother of the three sisters who is suspected to be fighting with ISIL in Syria.
Naz Shah, the local member of parliament, told Sky News she had met the women’s husbands and that they were shocked to have discovered their families were missing.
“If they have gone to Syria then the alarm bells are really, really loud,” she said, saying work had to be done to understand why the women would have taken such action without their husbands’ consent.
British authorities estimate more than 700 Britons have travelled to Syria, with a significant proportion thought to have joined ISIL which has taken over vast areas of the country and Iraq.
Families are among those to have travelled, and police said of those arrested on their return to Britain last year, 11 per cent were women and 17 percent were under 20.
“We are extremely concerned for the safety of the family,” said Assistant Chief Constable Russ Foster, of West Yorkshire Police. “Their families are gravely worried about them and want them home.”
* Reuters and Associated Press
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