Holding hands and merrily playing inside an aircraft hangar, these are the children among 114 asylum seekers who landed on British soil provoking a diplomatic row over who should take responsibility for them.

Two boats carrying 114 people, including 19 women and 28 children, sparked a security alert as they came ashore at dawn yesterday at an RAF base in Cyprus used to launch air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq.

Last night it was not known if the group, who are thought to be the first Syrians escaping the conflict to arrive directly on British soil, had intended to get to RAF Akrotiri, which was built when the island was still a UK colony.

Two Syrian refugee children, who are currently being housed at a hangar at an RAF base in Cyprus hold hands and play

One little boy plays with a rubber glove while waiting in the warehouse after arriving in Cyprus by boat after travelling from Syria

The boy and an older girl decided to blow up the gloves in order to create makeshift balloons as they play while waiting

The children were among 114 people who sparked a security alert as they came ashore at dawn yesterday at an RAF base in Cyprus used to launch air strikes against Islamic State in Iraq

The group was last night taken to a hangar on the RAF base, where they were being looked after. Some claimed they had left Turkey three days ago and were trying to get to Greece.

Others said they had paid smugglers $4,000 (£2,585) each to make the journey in the 40ft wooden boats, but were abandoned.

A woman who gave her name as Jana said she was seven months pregnant. ‘I want to go to Europe,’ said the 26-year-old. ‘I want to leave here.’

Ali Nowfal, 23, added: ‘We are escaping the war and the terrible situation in Syria.

‘I am with two friends, aged 23 and 27. I have an uncle in London. I want to go there.’

Some of the asylum seekers, who arrived at the base said that they were trying to get to Greece when they left Turkey by boat three days ago

Many of the refugees in the warehouse said that they were fleeing Syria to escape the conflict in the country

The MoD said that it expected the migrants to be handed over to the Cypriot authorities once they had been processed

Children who were also on the boats were pictured happily playing with each other inside the hangar as they blew up rubber gloves and chased them around.

The MoD said that it expected the migrants to be handed over to the Cypriot authorities once they had been processed.

'We have had an agreement in place with the Republic of Cyprus since 2003 to ensure that the Cypriot authorities take responsibility in circumstances like this,' a ministry statement said.

The Cyprus Interior Ministry said it was holding consultations with the British High Commission (embassy) on the matter.

Some of the migrants said they had paid smugglers $4,000 (£2,585) each to make the journey in the 40ft wooden boats, but were abandoned

Wooden pallets with clothes and blankets lay outside the warehouse where the migrants were taken as a temporary solution

British service personnel look on as Syrian refugees are housed in a warehouse after arriving near to an RAF base in Cyprus

However, a source on the island accused the Ministry of Defence of allowing the boats to reach the base 'unchallenged' and raised fears they could have been militants from the Islamic State.

The source told Sky News : 'What if the landing had been of a smaller scale and by members of ISIS, seeking to attack?

'If the MoD can't detect and intercept refugees, there would appear to be a significant vulnerability as yet unaddressed at a time when security and defence are apparently at the fore of the Conservative government agenda.'

In 1998, a ramshackle fishing boat crammed with 75 migrants landed at Akrotiri.

Seventeen years on, some of them are still living on another British base on the island after repeated appeals for asylum in Britain were turned down.

Security scare: Images released by the MoD show British troops rounding up nearly 120 migrants after two boatloads of refugees landed at the RAF Akrotiri air base in Cyprus

It is the first time since the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean began that they have landed directly on UK soil

The migrants who landed in Akrotiri in 1998 were mostly Iraqi and Syrian Kurds, who had given their life savings to people smugglers to ferry them from Lebanon to Italy.

But the boat's engine sputtered out and the Lebanese crew fled in an inflatable dinghy.

The migrants were moved from Akrotiri to Dhekelia, Britain's largest base on the island, where they were housed in rudimentary, former quarters for British service families that were due to be demolished.

In what was meant to be a temporary measure, they were provided with weekly welfare allowances but 17 years on, 21 of them remain on the base.

British troops talk to two male migrants and a child on the beach at the RAF Akrotiri air base

Cypriot authorities said the two boats were carrying 114 migrants – 67 men, 19 women and 28 children

The MoD expected the migrants to be handed over to the Cypriot authorities once they had been processed

With children born there and family members who later joined them, they make up a group of 67.

Britain started using RAF Akrotiri to bomb the Islamic State in northern Iraq in September 2014.

Prime Minister David Cameron visited the base two months later to meet pilots, engineers and logistic support staff.

The base is one of two sovereign territories retained by Britain on Cyprus, a colony until 1960.

Breached: An RAF Tornado fighter jet is seen at the Akrotiri base near the Cypriot port city of Limassol. Two boatloads of refugees have exposed an alarming security lapse after managing to land at the base

Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron meets Royal Air Force pilots, engineers and logistic support staff in front of a Tornado GR4 at RAF Akrotiri, in Cyprus in October last year

Too close for comfort: The migrants boats landed on the shore at RAF Akrotiri, just a few hundred metres from the runway used by British fighters jets that are bombing Islamic State targets in northern Iraq

Cyprus lies just 60 miles from Syria but has so far avoided a mass influx of refugees from the country's war

Despite its proximity to Syria, EU member Cyprus has not seen any of the massive influx of refugees seen by either Italy or Greece, where arrivals have topped 500,000 this year.

Refugees have tended to avoid the island because of its relative geographical isolation from the rest of Europe and difficulties in leaving.

In the last two months, Cypriot authorities rescued 128 Syrian refugees aboard two boats in separate incidents.

The number of migrants who have claimed asylum in Europe so far this year has now passed three-quarters of a million.