Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

As Barack Obama proposes international effort to stop foreign fighters travelling to the Middle East, US officials admit the FBI is monitoring an unspecified number of returned US jihadists

The FBI is monitoring a number of US citizens who have returned to America after fighting for the jihadist groups in Syria, including the Islamic State (Isil), the US has confirmed for the first time.

An administration official told Time magazine that the US National Counterterrorism Center believes that approximately 100 US citizens have gone on jihad, but declined to specify how many have returned to the US.

“It includes those who’ve gone, those who’ve tried to go, some who’ve come back and are under activeâ?”the FBI is looking at them,” the official said of the overall number. “These are FBI matters, I refer you to them on specifics.” The FBI did not immediately return a request for comment from The Telegraph. It was unclear if the returned fighters were in custody or under surveillance.

Officials have previously acknowledged that approximately 100 US passport holders have gone to fight in Iraq and Syria, but have generally played down any threat they might pose to the US homeland.

The acknowledgement by senior administration officials that some fighters have now returned is likely to raise questions over Barack Obama’s recent assurance in a primetime address to the nation that the US had not “detected specific plotting against our homeland” by Isil.

Last week a Democrat congressman from New York, Tim Bishop, claimed that there were 40 returned fighters in the US, however that number was quickly dismissed by officials as “wildly inaccurate”, although they again declined to provide specific numbers.

This week Mr Obama is due to chair a meeting at the United Nations General Assembly calling on members to take active steps to stem the flow of foreign fighters flowing into the Middle East to take part in Jihad.

Previewing the strategy at the White House last week, Susan Rice, the National Security Adviser, said that US national security agencies took the threat from returning fighters “very seriously” and were working to combat it.

“It’s something we track closely. And we are doing obviously all that we can to both gather the necessary information and take the appropriate precautions to the greatest extent that we possibly can,” she said.

US anti-terror officials estimate that in total some 15,000 foreign fighters from 80 countries have gone to Iraq and Syria, including some 500 British citizens.

David Cameron, in contrast to Mr Obama, has been much more alarmist about the threat posed by Isil and fighters returning to their home countries.

After the beheading of the British hostage David Haines last week, Mr Cameron warned in a statement that the group “have planned and continue to plan attacks across Europe and in our country.”