BERLIN, May 31: Three German women who converted to Islam have been apprehended in Germany for expressing the desire in internet chatrooms to stage suicide attacks in Iraq or Pakistan, local media reported on Wednesday.

The daily Der Tagesspiegel quoted a high-ranking security expert as saying that German authorities had managed in recent weeks to stop the women from leaving the country.

It said that two of the women planned to take their babies with them on suicide missions in Pakistan or against US troops in Iraq.

The women in their late 20s to 40s became radicalised under the influence of their Islamic extremist spouses and in repeated visits to radical chatrooms, the expert was quoted as saying.

He said entries on such websites had exposed them to investigators as a potential threat. Two of the three women were believed to have been in contact with each other.

One of the women, from Berlin, has been consigned to a psychiatric hospital while her two-year-old child is in the custody of the authorities, the daily Berliner Zeitung said in a separate report.

There were contradictory reports as to whether the two other women, living in the south of the country, were being held for questioning.—AFP