German courts have ordered Angela Merkel’s government must allow an Isil bride and her children home.

In the first ruling of its kind, a court ordered that the government must repatriate the woman from a refugee camp in Syria for the safety of her children.

The families of dozens of other German Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) volunteers are expected to seize on the ruling as they campaign for the return of their relatives.

Like the UK, Germany has so far refused to repatriate citizens who travelled to the Middle East to join Isil, fearing they could pose a security risk.

The woman in the new ruling, who has not been named, is currently living in the al-Hol refugee camp in Syria with her three children aged two, seven and eight. She is understood to be from the Lower Saxony region of Germany.

In an urgent hearing, the court found that conditions in the camp, recently described as “horrifying” by the International Red Cross, presented a serious danger to the children.