A Belgian judge has ordered the government to repatriate six children of Islamic State (IS) militants and their mothers who have been detained in a camp in Kurdish-controlled Syria, the national news agency Belga said on Wednesday.

Tatiana Wielandt, 26, and Bouchra Abouallal, 25, both Belgian citizens, and their children have been held in the Al-Hol camp in since the defeat of IS in nearly all territory it once held in Syria and Iraq.

Belga quoted the court ruling as ordering the Brussels government to take all necessary and possible measures to ensure the six children and their mothers can return to Belgium.

It must do so within 40 days after being notified of the decision or pay a daily penalty of 5,000 euros for each child, up to a maximum 1 million euros, newspaper De Tijd said. The Belgian government can appeal the ruling.

No comment was available from the court on Wednesday due to a public holiday. A lawyer for the two women was not immediately available for comment.

A spokesman for the foreign ministry said it would “analyse the situation together” with the justice and interior ministries.

Hundreds of European citizens, many of them babies, are being kept by U.S.-backed Kurdish militias in three camps since IS was ousted last year from almost all the large swathes of territory it seized in 2014-15, according to Kurdish sources.

European nations have been reluctant to take them back, regarding children of jihadists both as victims and threats – difficult to reintegrate into schools and homes.

European diplomats say they cannot act in a region where Kurdish control is not internationally recognised. Moreover, there is little popular sympathy for militants’ families after a spate of deadly IS attacks across western Europe.

The Kurd say it is not their job to prosecute or hold them indefinitely, leaving the women and children in legal limbo.

However, mounting concern over the apparent abandonment of hundreds of children with a claim to EU citizenship – most of them under six – is pushing governments to quietly explore how to tackle the complexities of bringing them back.

Militants behind an attack on Jordanian police supported Islamic State and investigations had revealed plans for more attacks on security and civilian targets, Jordan’s interior minister said on Monday.

Jordanian police said on Saturday a homemade explosive device planted near a police van killed a policeman and injured six others the day before.

The police vehicle had been maintaining security near a music festival in the majority Christian town of Fuhais, near the capital Amman and 15 kilometres (about 10 miles) from the hillside city of Salt.

In a huge security operation, Jordanian forces laid siege to a building in a residential part of Salt on Saturday night in search of those responsible for the bomb attack.

After the suspected militants refused to heed calls to surrender, the security forces stormed the building in a shoot out that resulted in the death of three militants and four security personnel, police said.

Ten members of the security forces were also injured.

Interior Minister Sameer al-Mobaideen said the militants, who blew up part of the building when the security forces stormed it, did not belong to a specific group but subscribed to Islamic State ideology.

Militants from Islamic State and other radical jihadist groups have long targeted U.S.-allied Jordan and dozens of militants are serving long prison terms.

“There were plots to wage a series of terror attacks that sought security points and popular gatherings. We know the targets but we won’t tell them so people won’t get terrified,” Mobaideen said.

King Abdullah, a Middle East ally of Western powers against Islamist militancy who has also safeguarded Jordan’s peace treaty with Israel, warned on Saturday the perpetrators of the attack would pay dearly.

SECRET INVESTIGATIONS

The monarch has been among the most vocal leaders in the region in warning of threats posed by radical groups.

The group were all Jordanian and there were no signs so far they had foreign links, Mobaideen said, refusing to give names of suspects. “The investigations are secret and ongoing,” he told a news conference

Alongside automatic weapons in the suspect’s possession, the authorities found a location where chemical ingredients for manufacturing explosives were buried, Mobaideen added.

General Hussein Hawatmeh, head of Jordan’ Gendarmerie, said the militant cell was recently set up and there were indications its members had embraced radical ideology.

“What is dangerous is that these new recruits are more impulsive than those with experience in executing operations that harm Jordan’s security,” Hawatmeh told reporters.

Jordan has been relatively unscathed by the uprisings, civil wars and Islamist militancy that have swept the Middle East since 2011.

But there have been some incidents of Islamist violence, increasingly carried out by members of powerful tribes that are traditionally the backbone of support for the ruling Hashemite dynasty.

Security forces have been extra vigilant having warned that sympathisers of Islamic State could launch revenge attacks after militants were driven out of most of the territory they once controlled in Syria and Iraq.

Intelligence officials and some experts believe widening social disparities and a perception of official corruption are fuelling a rise in radicalisation among disaffected youths in a country with high unemployment and growing poverty.

Video posted online on Saturday (November 19) by the Islamic State-affiliated Amaq News Agency appears to show clashes between IS fighters and Iraqi forces near Mosul in Iraq.

The first clip purports to show Islamic State fighters firing heavy machineguns at unspecified targets on the outskirts of Aden, east of Mosul.

The footage also appears to show an unidentifiable aircraft flying overhead with the sound of gunfire in the background.

In the second clip, a bulldozer said to belong to Iraqi forces can be seen moving along with other military vehicles in Athba village, south of Mosul before being blown up.

A 100,000-strong alliance of Iraqi forces, with air and ground support from a U.S.-led coalition, have nearly surrounded Mosul but so far only breached the jihadists’ defences from the eastern side, establishing a small foothold inside the city.

Militants are dug in among more than a million civilians as a defence tactic to hamper air strikes. They are moving around the city through tunnels, driving suicide car bombs into advancing troops and hitting them with sniper and mortar fire

Macedonian police said they arrested four people on Saturday believed to have fought alongside Islamic State insurgents in Syria and Iraq, and were looking for another three.

Officers detained the group in the capital Skopje and the city of Tetovo and seized computers, mobile phones and passports, police official Dejana Nedeljkovic told local media.

Authorities in the former Yugoslav republic estimate as many as 130 of its citizens have fought or are currently fighting alongside Islamist groups in Syria and Iraq.

A Macedonian court sentenced six people, including an imam, to up to seven years in prison each in March for joining the fight or recruiting others.