A group of British medical students of Sudanese origin who went missing after travelling to Turkey are feared to have crossed into Syria to join the Islamic State (IS) group as doctors, reports and sources said on Sunday.
The families of the students have travelled to the Turkey-Syria border in a desperate appeal for them to return home before it is too late, a Turkish opposition MP said.
According to reports in Britain's The Guardian newspaper and the BBC, the nine young British medical students flew to Istanbul from the Sudanese capital Khartoum on March 12 and then overland towards Syria.
A Turkish MP from the Republican People's Party (CHP) Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, who represents the Hatay region bordering Syria, wrote on his Facebook page that he was helping the families in their search.
"The families of the young people have been in Turkey to search for them and bring them back," he added. "Our greatest hope is to save the doctors from ISIS and reunite them with their families."
He posted photographs of the nine British citizens -- five men and four women -- some proudly posing in academic dress on graduation day.
"They all have British passports and are of Sudanese origin," he said.
"Their families have travelled after them to stop them from joining IS. We are not able to confirm they have crossed into Syria".
Turkey has repeatedly been accused by its Western partners of not doing enough to halt the flow of extremists aiming to join IS jihadists, who have captured swathes of Iraq and Syria.
However in the last week it has deported back to Britain a young British woman and three male British teenagers who were suspected of trying to travel to Syria.
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