British counter-terrorism police have launched an international hunt to find three London schoolgirls feared to be making their way towards Islamic State (Isis)territory in Syria after fleeing the UK.

The girls, named as Shamima Begum, 15, Kadiza Sultana, 16, and an unidentified 15-year-old girl, slipped out of their homes in east London last Tuesday and caught a flight to Istanbul, Turkey, from where they are thought to be travelling to the Syrian border.

In the first public appeal of its kind, Scotland Yard counter-terrorism detectives pleaded for information about the whereabouts of the girls and urged them to return home to their “devastated” families.

The three girls, all students at Bethnal Green academy in east London, were friends with a 15-year-old girl who is believed to have travelled to join Isis last December.

(The Guardian)