Runaway girls ‘training’ for IS mission

Three runaway British schoolgirls who are feared to have joined the Islamic State in Syria are being trained for special missions, it has been claimed.

Sky News interviewed a woman who claims that she met, looked after, and taught the east London schoolgirls — Shamima Begum, Amira Abase, both 15, and Kadiza Sultana, 16 — how to behave when they arrived in February.

Speaking in broken English from the Turkey/Syria border, she said: “These girls, because they are very young, they want four or three months to start.”

The claim came as a new report suggested that “terror twins” Zahra and Salma Halane, 16, from Manchester, “have taken on influential roles” within the group of British women who have travelled to the war zone, including urging others to join them.

It is suggested the 22-year-old woman who knew about the London girls, who calls herself Um Asmah, recently defected from Islamic State where she was a senior female commander.

She said: “They was very happy to come to Syria in Ar-Raqqa and meet the most people of Daesh (Islamic State). I think it is interesting to them.”

She is not optimistic about the fate of the teenagers, believing they will not return home to Britain and might die in Syria or Iraq.

The Metropolitan Police believe around 600 Britons have travelled to Syria and Iraq since the conflict began, and around half are believed to have returned to the UK.