Warning on Al-qaeda's New Female Recruits

European intelligence chiefs have launched a major investigation into the threat posed by female Islamic militants within the EU, whose involvement runs from logistics or propaganda activity to suicide bombing, they say.

'This phenomenon has not been really taken into account yet and we need to explore and understand it,' said one diplomatic official connected with the probe. 'It is a new strategy by al-Qaeda.'

The moves follow a spate of attacks in the Middle East conducted by women bombers and increasing concerns among European security services about increased radicalisation of female militants. The officials specifically cite the UK and North Africa as problem areas.

Women's involvement in recruiting volunteers is a key concern. Though the only known European female suicide bomber was Muriel Degauque, a 38-year-old convert from Belgium who killed herself in Iraq in 2005, European security officials told The Observer that services were monitoring dozens of women involved in logistics or propaganda. There are also fears of women bombers being sent from overseas, particularly north Africa.

'This is now of a much greater scale than we have ever seen before. The problem is knowing who is just fundraising or running websites, who is recruiting and who is a potential bomber,' said one French intelligence specialist. 'Then how do you pick up someone coming in from outside the EU? That's hard to do.'

Gilles de Kerchove, European counter-terrorism co-ordinator, has asked British, French, Spanish, German and other European security services to pool their intelligence through Brussels' strategic analysis unit, the Joint Situation Centre, to produce a report by the autumn.

'The issue is a very high priority,' one EU official said. In the UK, the involvement of women in militant activities has so far been limited. Yet security services fear that this may not last.

'Time and again we have seen al-Qaeda trying tactics in one place and, if they work, trying them again elsewhere,' said the French source.

Women bombers have now become relatively common in Iraq because they can more easily penetrate much-tightened security measures. They elicit less suspicion, can disguise explosives under their clothes, and male soldiers are unwilling to search them.

In Algeria, according to security sources, the 'al-Qaeda in the Maghreb group' now use women in bombing campaigns. 'Women are largely responsible for support material: medicine, food, clothes,' said one. 'But some have more major roles. Last year we dismantled a logistical network run by a woman.'

According to the source, militants 'seek to recruit women with a brother, father or son already with the extremist groups'. Experts say this may be because, in traditional Islamic societies, women without close male relatives are exposed to economic and social problems that make them more vulnerable to recruitment. In Iraq, US intelligence officers say that militants are marrying women then allowing them to be raped in the knowledge that the subsequent dishonour and rejection will make them easier to groom as bombers. The officers have also noted a strong incidence of women who have had relatives, civilians or militants, killed in the fighting turning to violence.

The issue is not without controversy within militant circles. Recent statements by al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri that women should restrict themselves to caring for the homes and children of male fighters provoked an outcry on the numerous extremist websites. Palestinian, Sri Lankan, Chechen and Kurdish groups have all also used women volunteers in recent decades.

· A Taliban spokesman has denied an American media report that Ayman al-Zawahri might have been killed or wounded in a missile strike in Pakistan's border region last Monday.

'Zawahri has been killed by them several times, but once again this is baseless,' Maulvi Omar told Reuters by telephone. The whereabouts of al-Zawahri and Osama bin Laden have not been known since US-led forces launched a campaign to hunt them down in Afghanistan following the 11 September attacks. Both are believed to hiding somewhere in the border region between Pakistan and Afghanistan.