Scott Morrison has refused to countenance helping the children of the Islamic State fighter Khaled Sharrouf, after reports that they were being held at a Syrian refugee camp.

Sharrouf’s daughters – Zaynab, 17, who is pregnant, and Hoda, 16 – and son Hamza, eight, are in the Kurdish-controlled­ al-Hawl camp alongside eight other Australian women and their children, including Zaynab’s two daughters, aged three and two, the ABC reported on Monday.

They reportedly escaped Islamic’s State’s last stronghold in Baghouz before it was overrun by Kurdish fighters.

But the prime minister said they were not Australia’s responsibility.

“I’m not going to put one Australian life at risk to try and extract people from these dangerous situations,” Morrison told reporters in Canberra on Monday.

“I think it’s appalling that Australians have gone and fought against our values and our way of life and peace-loving countries of the world in joining the Daesh [Islamic State] fight.

“I think it’s even more despicable that they put their children in the middle of it.”

Two of Sharrouf’s sons, Abdullah and Zarqawi, are believed to have died, aged nine and eight respectively, alongside their father in a US air strike as they travelled in a car near Raqqa in 2017.

The children’s mother, Tara Nettleton, is believed to have died of a medical condition in 2015, a year after she followed Sharrouf to Syria from Sydney.

Her mother, Karen Nettleton, has called on the federal government to help her surviving grandchildren return to Australia.

“They’re with other Australian and foreign fighters [in the camps] and they shouldn’t be in amongst all of that,” she told the ABC.

The Home Affairs minister, Peter Dutton, has previously said that while the “full force of the law” would be used against returning adults who chose to fight with Isis, their children would be treated differently. They could be given assistance and potentially placed with other family.

Al-Hawl displacement camp shelters tens of thousands of the wives and children of Isis fighters, including citizens of more than 40 countries, and local authorities have warned it is being overwhelmed. At least 80 people, mostly children under the age of one, have died since December, the UN and International Rescue Committee have said.

The Australian reported on Monday there were 19 children among Australian Isis families at the camp.

The Sydney Morning Herald reported on Monday that a former Sydney tradesman held by Kurdish forces in one camp, Mohammed Noor Masri, had pleaded with Australia to bring him and his family home.

Masri, 26, said he accepted he might go to jail in Australia, but asked for his pregnant wife and their three young children, to be brought out of Syria.

“[I feel] remorseful, regretful. I mean, people make mistakes. And you have to pay the price for your mistake,” Masri told the Herald.

Governments around the world are now grappling with what to do about the orphaned children of Isis fighters. Last month France repatriated five children born to French jihadists, facilitated by Kurdish officials.

Also last month the baby of a British teenager, Shamima Begum, died at a Syrian refugee camp. Begum had traveled to Syria to join the Islamic State at the age of 15. Earlier this year she said she wanted to return home, but the UK government refused and her British citizenship was revoked.

Australian Associated Press contributed to this report