PARIS: Two girls, aged 15 and 17, are under investigation in France for allegedly making plans to join jihadis in Syria.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said on Friday that the girls, one from Tarbes in the southwest, the other from the city of Lyon, were placed under investigation a day earlier for criminal association in relation with a terrorist enterprise, a standard charge in terrorism cases in France.

The girls are under strict judicial control, according to the prosecutor’s office. It wasn’t clear whether they were returned to their families.

About 60 investigations are currently in progress in France concerning would-be jihadis or those who have left for the battlefields. Some 900 French are implicated in the phenomenon which has spread across Europe and is deeply worrisome to authorities.

Published in Dawn, August 23rd, 2014