Two of the British medical students who have crossed into Islamic State-held areas are a brother and sister in their early 20s whose family are the latest to join a frantic group of relatives at the Turkish border.
The pair’s father flew to a Turkish border town early on Saturday, and drove to meet the other families who have set up temporary camp in a hotel near Isis-controlled parts of Syria.
The group of parents are trying to convince their children to come home, and many have pledged not to leave Turkey without them. The children have been sending their families regular messages insisting they are well, but have not said where they are.
All of the group, believed to be 11 or 12 strong, had Sudanese roots and were studying medicine or recent graduates from medical school living in Khartoum. A majority are British citizens but a couple are thought to be Sudanese.
The siblings are in their early 20s and their first names are believed to be Tamir and Logain, according to Turkish politician Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, who is helping the parents in their search.
Their names were not included in a list Ediboglu provided of the British medics who had gone across the border, but he said he now thought two of those he originally named may have other nationalities.
The Foreign Office is understood to be helping the families of seven of the students, who have approached it for assistance, and has asked the Turkish police to help search for them.
“We are providing consular assistance to families of British nationals who are believed to be missing after travelling to Turkey,” a Foreign Office spokesman said. “We are also working closely with the Turkish police to try to establish their whereabouts.”
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The Home Office has said the medics would not automatically face prosecution under anti-terror laws if they tried to return to the UK, as long as they could prove they had not been fighting.
The group flew from Sudan to Istanbul then took a bus to the border, and are believed to have crossed over around 14 March. The first of their parents arrived that same day, after one of the students tipped off her sister that she was travelling across the Turkish border.
“Don’t worry about us, we’ve reached Turkey and are on our way to volunteer helping wounded Syrian people,” medical student Lena Maumoon Abdulqadir wrote.
Her father rushed to try to stop her, and also raised the alert among other British Sudanese families with children studying in Khartoum. It soon became clear that several had children among the medical group.
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The UK is believed to be home to the oldest Sudanese diaspora in the west, made up of professionals, business people, academics and students, joined in more recent years by asylum seekers fleeing civil war.
Before the 1970s, the Sudanese community in Britain was small and mostly comprising business people and students.
In recent years, there has been an influx of southern Sudanese refugees. Some have travelled from other EU states, such as Germany and Sweden, drawn to the UK by the desire to join family and friends as well as to live in an English-speaking country.
In 2001, the UK census registered 10,671 Sudanese-born residents, but that number is thought to have grown, and the wider British Sudanese community now includes thousands of people with Sudanese roots who were born and raised in the UK.
According to estimates from the World Bank in 2008, the UK was the fifth most popular destination for Sudanese emigrants in 2005, after Saudi Arabia, Uganda, Chad, and the United States.
