Three teenage girls from Toronto attempted to join ISIS, the Toronto Daily Star reported Friday, in order to become the brides of Islamist terrorists.
All three girls, aged 15-18, are of Somali heritage, according to the daily; two were sisters.
The three attempted to enter Syria via Turkey - boarding a flight from Toronto to Cairo, then from Cairo to Istanbul - before being apprehended by border officials in Turkey after the girls' parents alerted authorities.
Canadian officials praised the parents for taking quick action.
“The parents felt comfortable in contacting police to prevent the young girls from ruining their lives,” Hamilton, CA lawyer Hussein Hamdani, who has worked in the past to help bring together Muslim communities and the police, said to the Star. “This is something we want to encourage and keep building those bridges.”
Hundreds of women have flocked to ISIS to become "terror brides," with the prevalence of teenage emigrants alarming Western officials.
Just days ago, French officials estimated that at least 100 women and girls have fled France to join the group; last month, British officials counted at least sixty women who have joined ISIS's "modesty police" in Raqqa.
Women's decision to leave Western culture for IS has made headlines for the oddity of the choice, as international media has widely covered the terror group's brutality to women under its reign.
Women have largely been ordered to cover up completely and stay at home, and forcible rape in the early days of ISIS was - and may still be - a common occurrence. Just last week, ISIS publication Dabiq encouraged terrorists to rape non-Muslim women and submit them to "sexual slavery" in the name of Islam.