The Federal Government is not coming to the rescue of twenty Australian women who traveled to the Middle East to become "ISIS brides", only to find themselves trapped in northern Syria before Turkey's invasion.

"These are people that would, in our judgement - not all of them but some of them - have the potential and capacity to come back here and cause a mass casualty event," Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said in an interview with 2GB radio.  "So I don't think it should come as a surprise when we say we're not going to send our soldiers to rescue people of this nature."

It is believed twenty Australian women and more than 40 children are trapped in the al-Hawl refugee camp.  Dutton is rejecting pleas from women who claim they were tricked into leaving Australia to live in the short-lived, so-called Islamic State.

"They've gone willingly and or they are as hardcore as some of the male terrorists they've seen in Syria and Iraq," Dutton said.

Home Affairs has cancelled the passports of 17 dual nationals who left Australia to fight for the IS cause, effectively stripping them of Australian citizenship.  It's not clear how many of them are among the 20 women in the al-Hawl refugee camp.