WELFARE payments to more than a dozen suspected jihadists have been axed to stop Australian taxpayers’ money being used to finance terrorist outrages in Iraq and Syria.

But the Federal Government refuses to say whether an audit has guaranteed the cancellation of all welfare to Australians suspected of joining the Islamic State.

Wanted terrorist Khaled Sharrouf, who was photographed executing Iraqi soldiers and whose young son was photographed holding a soldier’s severed head, received a $383-a-week disability support pension for several months. It lapsed after he left Australia on his brother’s passport.

An estimated 150 Australians have travelled to Iraqi and Syrian war zones.

“The Abbott Government has already cancelled welfare payments for a number of individuals who are overseas,” a spokesman for Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews told the Herald Sun.

“The Abbott Government is committed to ensuring Australians engaged in terrorist activities are not receiving taxpayer-funded payments.”

DIGGERS RETURN: Abbott won’t rule out fighting another gulf war

ANDREW BOLT: Refusing to see evil puts us in danger

COMMENT: The humanitarian crisis in Iraq

EDITORIAL: Combat force faces a trap

RESCUE MISSION: Aussie news photographer in chopper crash,

Yesterday Australia assigned two Hercules C-130 aircraft to drop food to 30,000 Yazidi Iraqis facing the threat of genocide in the Sinjar mountains.

And Prime Minister Tony Abbott would not rule out further military action in Iraq by Australian forces.

“Austraila should do what it can to protect people from potential genocide,” Mr Abbott said.

The “darkening” terrorist and humanitarian situation in Iraq and its ramifications for Australia was the Government’s highest priority, he said.

“We all know that the murderous hordes of ISIL — now the Islamic State — are on the march in northern Iraq,” he said.

“What happens in Syria and Iraq doesn’t happen in isolation. What happens in these countries does have ramifications in Australia.”

Mr Abbott’s office had previously vowed to investigate options to cease the international portability of welfare payments for people suspected by security agencies of joining militant or terrorist ranks.

An estimated 150 Australians have travelled to the Iraqi and Syrian war zones, about 60 of whom are thought to be on the front line.

It is understood a significant number were receiving unemployment, disability or family payments while at the same time being members of the Islamic State or the al-Qaida-linked al-Nusra Front.

The Government is now considering further measures to stop welfare payments to militants engaged in foreign conflicts, including Iraq and Syria.

That may include red-flagging payments as part of a Customs revamp requiring people travelling to conflict zones to justify their journey.

Security analysts say it is not uncommon for Islamic fundamentalists in Australia, who often have large families, to not hold down full-time jobs and to be receiving a range of welfare benefits.

“We often drop the ball, where government departments don’t speak to each other,” the Monash University Global Terrorism Research Centre’s Greg Barton said.

Prof Barton said there was no formal research on how widespread social welfare payments to extremists were.

But extremists receiving them typically considered them as a way to take advantage of governments and which allows them to commit to their fundamentalist cause.

“We don’t know the scale of the problem, but these are the sort of things we should be following up on,” he said.

As part of Australia’s de-radicalisation program, Prof Barton said understanding extremists’ reliance on welfare was part of early intervention.

Mr Abbott said the horrifying picture of a seven-year-old boy, understood to be Sharrouf’s son, holding a severed head, was an abomination.

“One of the images that has seared itself into the consciousness, not just of Australians but of people everywhere, is the photograph that was published on the internet and subsequently in newspapers around the world of a seven-year-old Australian, born and bred, in Syria, waving around a severed head as if it were a show bag at the Easter Show,” Mr Abbott said.

“This is absolutely hideous. It is absolutely gruesome and it indicates the mentality of the people who are fighting with Islamic State and the other terrorist groups in the Middle East.

“It is absolutely essential that we do whatever we reasonably can to ensure that the Australian community is safe from people who have been radicalised, militarised, brutalised by the experience of engaging in terrorist activity in the Middle East.”

mark.dunn@news.com.au