Muslim women have been fleeing Tunisia in droves to wage “sex jihad” in Syria by sleeping with multiple Islamist militants as a legitimate form of holy war, Interior Minister Lotfi ben Jeddou told members of the National Constituent Assembly on Thursday.

“They have sexual relations with 20, 30, 100” militants, he said, according to Agence France-Presse. “After the sexual liaisons they have there in the name of ‘jihad al-nikah’ — (sexual holy war, in Arabic) — they come home pregnant.”

According to AFP, jihad al-nikah describes a phenomenon of women traveling to the battlefield to provide sex for rebel fighters.

Ben Jeddou didn’t give statistics on how many women are fleeing the country or how many come back pregnant with jihadists’ children, though media reports have said hundreds have done so, AFP said.

Hundreds of Tunisian men have also joined the fight against President Bashar al-Assad.

Media reports say thousands of people have fled the country in the past 15 years to join jihadists across the world in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, AFP said.

Sign up for Daily Newsletters Manage Newsletters

Copyright © 2020 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.