Three schoolgirls feared to have fled to Syria to join Islamic State were interviewed by police just two months ago, it has been revealed.
The Metropolitan Police said Shamima Begum, 15, Kadiza Sultana, 16 and a third 15-year-old girl, who has not been named, were questioned in December as part of a "routine inquiry" after one of their classmates, also 15, travelled to the warzone.
According to The Times none of the three were subsequently monitored by counterterrorism police.
It was only when their families raised the alarm that authorities discovered the girls had fled the country, the paper has claimed.
However police said they found "nothing to suggest" the girls were likely to flee.
"There was nothing to suggest at the time that the girls themselves were at risk and indeed their disappearance has come as a great surprise, not least to their own families," the Metropolitan Police said in a statement.
The girls were last seen on Tuesday morning as they left their homes in East London, telling their families they would be out for the day.
Instead they met and travelled to Gatwick airport before boarding a Turkish Airlines flight, which landed at Istanbul that evening.
Sky News has uncovered a tweet sent from Shamima Begum's Twitter account two days earlier, asking a friend already in Syria to follow her so they can start messaging privately.
The friend is understood to be a former private school pupil from Glasgow who travelled to Syria to marry a fighter.
Turkish Airlines reportedly did not notify authorities that the girls had boarded the flight to Turkey - a known stop for would-be jihadists travelling to Syria.
Questions have now been raised over how the girls - who attended the Bethnal Green Academy school and were described as "straight-A students" - were able to leave the UK so easily.
Former Metropolitan Police border control officer Chris Hobbs told Sky News that checks for people departing from UK airports made it a "walk in the park for jihadis and girls like this" to leave.
"At the moment you go through security, you get on the plane, you might be checked by a private security guard," he said.
"Unless you're very unlucky you won't pass under the eyes of anyone from UK law enforcement.
"If you're on a watch list then you will ping the system. If you're not on the radar then the odds are you will get on the plane without too many problems."
The number of Westerners who have travelled to Iraq and Syria to join IS is thought to be about 3,000, including as many as 550 women, according to the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
On Friday the head of the Metropolitan Police's counter terror command, Richard Walton, said there was a "good chance" the girls were still in Turkey, but that he was "extremely concerned" for their safety.
"We are concerned about the numbers of girls and young women who have or are intending to travel to the part of Syria that is controlled by the terrorist group calling themselves Islamic State," Mr Walton said.
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Gallery: Schoolgirls May Have Gone To Syria
Scotland Yard are trying to trace three teenage girls from the same East London school who are believed to have run off to Syria
CCTV captured images of the girls at Gatwick Airport
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