British women being used by Isis to incite acts of terror at home

A group of 30 women that traveled to Syria are targeting women in the UK say researchers

Militants shown in a video speaking French and calling on fellow extremists to carry out further attacks

A group of 30 British women who travelled to Syria to join Isis have been encouraging women in the UK to carry out acts of terror at home, including beheadings, researchers have discovered.

The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) at King’s College London has uncovered the group of British women in Northern Syria by monitoring their social media accounts, according to The Observer.

Researchers believe the British female jihadists have been actively recruiting new members of Isis and encouraging the beheading of Westerners, while applauding the bloodshed in Paris, overturning the general view that women travelling to Isis strongholds to become loyal and supportive jihadi brides are generally quiet and passive members of the terrorist group.

Isis has also been found to be grooming girls as young as 14 online before offering them cash to marry Isis fighters.

Among the women being tracked in Syria by researchers is a 16-year-old from Manchester who was seen praising the Paris shootings on Twitter.

According to ICSR, which has a database of around 70 women it is tracking in total, there was a spike of activity online following the Charlie Hebdo shootings in which the British women were seen applauding the attacks.

Melanie Smith, a research fellow at ICSR and the woman in charge of ICSR’s Female Foreign Fighters database, told The Observer that the British women have been telling people at home, who cannot leave their family or afford to get to Syria to join Isis, to carry out attacks in the UK instead.

Smith said that the women appear to be “frustrated” they are not able to fight and actively want to do something else. “Women have historically been used in suicide bombings and singular operations,” she said.