LONDON: Relatives of three sisters from Britain who disappeared in the Middle East with their nine children are appealing Tuesday for information amid fears the group may have travelled to Syria to join the Islamic State group.
Police on Tuesday are trying to establish the whereabouts of the Dawood family, from Bradford, England, who disappeared after going to Saudi Arabia. Their disappearance comes amid questions about how to tackle the radicalization of young people attracted to the Islamic State group’s slick propaganda campaigns.
“The family are quite understandably distraught,” the family attorney, Balaal Hussain Khan, told the BBC. “They don’t know what to do.”
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 on June 11, but broke off all contact on June 9.
They were last seen at a hotel in
Medina, Saudi Arabia. Travel agents said 10 tickets were sold for a flight from Medina to Istanbul. It is unclear whether they boarded the flight.
“Ten out of the 12 have been accounted for,” Khan said. “We don’t know what’s happened to the other two so there’s a lot of unanswered questions as far as Saudi Arabia is concerned as well.”
Khan said the fathers are appealing for information.
“If there are any friends of the wives or even the children who might have known about this trip, where they are going or if there has been any contact with anyone other than the family members, we are quite keen on you contacting either the police, my firm or the family directly,” he said.
Khan said it is feared the sisters have met up with a relative fighting with Islamic State or another extremist group in Syria.