Three young Belgian women are to return home from Morocco, where they had been performing volunteer work, after a teacher threatened to cut their heads off for wearing shorts.

The teacher, who lives in the area around the village of Adar, saw the girls helping out by volunteering to build a road and took to social media to threaten them for wearing 'skimpy' clothes.

The Moroccan primary school teacher, who has not been named, said that he wanted to decapitate the young women in order to "teach a lesson to those who do not respect the Muslim faith', local media has reported.

He has since been arrested by the Moroccan police and is to be charged with 'incitement to terrorist acts'.

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Credit: CEN

The young women were part of a group of around 40 people who had given up time during the summer months to volunteer with the Bouworde organisation, which has now announced that all further camps in Morocco are to be cancelled as a result of this incident.

On the organisation's website, a statement read: "We have been advised not to send new groups to Morocco.

"We will follow this advice and we have decided to cancel all the following camps in Morocco,"

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Credit: CEN

Bouworde did however say that it had received assurances from the Moroccan authorities for the safety of the remaining people on this particular trip and had offered to take back anyone who felt unsafe.

However, 34 of the remaining volunteers decided that they'd rather stay.

Social media users and the press in Morocco have hit out at the teacher's views and a protest has been planned to take place on a beach in Casablanca organised by a Facebook group calling itself 'Yes we short'.

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There was also an 'Everyone in shorts' petition that garnered more than 1,000 signatures.

Credit: CEN

One of the Belgian girls, named only as Luna in the French press, said: "All the population is very kind. They are always friendly and they always say 'hello' and 'how are you?' and 'what is your name?'.

"I really love it here. I am really happy that I came here.

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"This is such a lovely country and everything here is very cool."

Another of the girls, who French media reports to be called Aline, added: "I am here to help Moroccans and it is really interesting to see the differences between us and them.