9 medical students ‘join the IS’
LONDON: Nine British medical students have travelled to Syria, apparently to work in hospitals controlled by the Islamic State (IS), Britain’s Observer newspaper reported yesterday.
The group of four women and five men crossed into Syria from Turkey last week, having travelled from Sudan where they had been studying, said the story, published on the website of the Observer’s sister paper, the Guardian.
It quoted Turkish opposition politician Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, who had met members of the students’ families who were trying to persuade the students to return.
Britain’s security services estimate that some 600 Britons have gone to Syria or Iraq to join militant groups, including the man known as “Jihadi John”, who has appeared in several IS beheading videos.
The IS’ attempt to create a theocratic Sunni Muslim “caliphate” by violent means has attracted thousands of recruits from Europe and elsewhere.
Three British schoolgirls are thought to have travelled through Turkey to Syria in February to join the militant group, in one of the most high-profile recent cases. Their families and British authorities have made repeated appeals for them to return home.
Britain’s Foreign Office was not immediately available for comment on Saturday.
The group of medical students are in their late teens and early 20s and all have Sudanese roots but were born and brought up in Britain, the story said.
On Satuday, 45 people including five children, were killed in attacks on Syrian Kurds as they celebrated their new year, a monitor said, accusing the IS group of responsibility.
The attacks occurred on Friday in what was one of the IS’ bloodiest days in Syria, as the Sunni Muslim extremist group killed more than 120 people across the war-ravaged country.
“There are now 45 dead from last night’s attacks in Hasakeh, after most of those who were in a critical condition passed away,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Two explosions struck as members of Syria’s Kurdish minority took part in festivities on the eve of Nowruz, the Kurdish new year, in the northeastern city of Hasakeh.
“They were lighting the candles at night and there were a lot children around,” said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.
There was no admission of responsibility, but Mr Rahman said the IS was behind the attacks. He said the explosions were a few hundred metres apart from each other, with at least one caused by a suicide bomber in a vehicle.