Missing London schoolgirls ‘at house in al Raqqa with another runaway’

Three missing schoolgirls who left Britain to join Islamic State have crossed into Syria and are believed to be staying at a women’s only house in al Raqqa, with a former private schoolgirl from Glasgow who travelled to Syria to marry a fighter, Sky sources say. Shamima Begum, 15, Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Amira Abase, 15, boarded a flight from Gatwick Airport bound for Istanbul last month. Authorities feared the teenagers, who attended Bethnal Green Academy in east London, were seeking to join the Islamist militants. Sky’s Stuart Ramsay said: “We’re being told tonight that they’ve crossed into Syria through a crossing… which is not too far from Kilis.”

They’re now apparently in a house that is owned or controlled - or at least hosted by - a British girl who had been in contact with them through the internet, and had brought them through Turkey and into Syria.

Sky News reporter Stuart Ramsay

Last week CCTV footage emerged which appeared to show the three teenagers at a bus station in Istanbul 24 hours after they left Gatwick Airport. The girls were seen wrapped in heavy winter jackets, two with hoods pulled up, and carrying packed sports bags and holdalls. The Metropolitan Police have snce revealed that the three girls were questioned by officers in December as part of a “routine inquiry” but none of them was subsequently monitored by counter-terrorism police.

There’s been a lot of discussion about where they are, (and) how they got there. But we are told they are now inside Syria, they are inside al Raqqa, and they are under the control of Islamic State.

Stuart Ramsay

World British schoolgirls