A legion of nearly 1,000 jihadi brides are set to return to the West as the caliphate collapses bringing with them a dangerous new wave of terror.

Brussels fears the decline of ISIS and its territories is prompting women and their children to flee the Middle East and relocate in the West.

A report by EU border agency Frontex warns the threat is 'evolving' and that it is hard to assess the long-term threat of widowed wives and orphaned children.

Brussels fears the decline of ISIS and its territories is prompting women and their children to flee the Middle East and relocate in the West (CCTV shows British schoolgirls Shamima Begum and Amira Abase 15, and Kadiza Sultana, 16, on the Turkish leg of their trip to Syria)

It comes amid a frightening trend of women having sought 'more active roles' in jihad following the rise of IS.

Several women were involved in a plot to attack Notre Dame cathedral in September 2016, while there have been numerous high-profile cases of British women fleeing to Syria to marry IS fighters.

Frontex says: 'An estimated 30 per cent of 5,000 foreign terrorist fighters who resided in Europe, and left to Syria, Iraq or Libya have come back to the Continent.

'The challenges are even more complicated when adding the hundreds of brides and children.'

'Almost 1,000 women from Europe have joined the different jihadist groups in the Middle East, mainly Daesh. Furthermore several hundred minors are also believed to have been brought to, or born in, the same region.'

In 2017 a British female jihadist who became known as the White Widow and Mrs Terror was killed in a US drone strike while attempting to flee the IS capital of Raqqa.

A report by EU border agency Frontex warns the threat is 'evolving' and that it is hard to assess the long-term threat of widowed wives and orphaned children (CCTV shows British schoolgirls Shamima Begum and Amira Abase 15, and Kadiza Sultana, 16, on the Turkish leg of their trip to Syria)

In 2017 a British female jihadist who became known as the White Widow was killed in a US drone strike while attempting to flee the IS capital of Raqqa

Onetime punk rocker Sally Jones, from Kent, fled to Syria with her son in 2013 before becoming a recruiter for the terror group.

She was killed by a Predator missile near the border of Iraq and Syria as she tried to flee the group's stronghold in Raqqa, it is understood.

While former director of global counter-terrorism at MI6 Richard Barrett said last October that from the start of 2017 to May women were involved in almost a quarter of all terror plots in Europe.

Women have become so prominent within jihadi campaigns that al-Qaeda released a propaganda magazine in December aimed solely at women.

The magazine called Beituki - translated as Your Home - advises women on how best to support their husbands including 'always greeting him with a smile.'