UK plans to use ‘mercenaries’ to get orphans back from Syria

MINISTERS could draft in private military contractors to extract three British orphans from Syria after a Cabinet backlash over sending in UK troops, The MoS can reveal.

Initial plans to use UK special forces to repatriate the children of a dead Islamic State fighter were met with strong resistance from the Cabinet, prompting a Foreign Office rethink.

As this newspaper revealed earlier this month, successive Home Secretaries Sajid Javid and Priti Patel have both argued that the issues involved in extracting such orphans are too great, and Defence Secretary Ben Wallace has warned the risk to UK personnel is high if they are sent into the region.

It is understood the new plans drawn up by Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab’s officials would involve foreign private security experts working with the International Red Cross to bring the children back via Turkey or Iraq with no risk to UK troops.

Public attention has focused on three children from East London after they were discovered in Northern Syria by the BBC.

Girls Amira, ten, and Hiba, eight, and their brother Hamza, also about eight, are understood to have travelled to the region five years ago. However, it is believed their parents and three other siblings were killed during the defeat of IS.

Former Tory Cabinet Minister David Davis previously warned the Government: ‘If we do nothing we will be abandoning our moral obligations’ – and possibly risking the children becoming terrorists in the future.

The Foreign Office said they wanted to provide ‘safe passage’ for the orphans, ‘but this process is far from straightforward’.

A senior source said last night: ‘If they can get to Damascus or to Iraq, it makes things a bit easier.’