The grandmothers of two orphaned children of French jihadists held in camps in Syria are suing the French state for failing to bring them back to France, their lawyer said Tuesday.

The children, a girl aged five and a two-year-old boy, are in the care of a Kurdish militia at the Roj camp in Al Hasakah, north-eastern Syria, according to the lawyer, Samia Maktouf.

“They are in real danger without more international military protection,” said Ms Maktouf, who has represented the families of people killed in terror attacks in France including the 2015 Bataclan atrocity.

“These children, born under terror, should not undergo further suffering. France has a duty to protect them.”

The boy’s mother was aged only 14 when she ran away from her home in France and went to the then Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) stronghold of Raqqa, in Syria, in 2014.

Radicalised online, she died last year during the bombing of Raqqa by US-led coalition forces. The child’s father is described as a European convert to Islam, said to have died after being detained in Iraq.