A family of asylum seekers were deported to Germany today after losing their battle to stay in the UK.

The Ay family, Kurdish refugees from Turkey, were held at Tinsley House Immigration Centre at Gatwick before their specially-arranged flight to Germany.

They were believed to have been on a Channel Express flight from Stansted to Frankfurt this morning.

The Home Office last night dismissed an emotional 11th-hour appeal by their eldest child to be allowed to stay in Britain.

A spokesman said today: "All we can say is that they have now been removed. We cannot discuss the operational arrangements of any individual case."

There were no signs of an expected protest at the airport this morning, despite a high-profile campaign to allow the family to stay in the UK.

Yurdugal Ay and her four children claimed they faced being sent to Turkey and persecuted if removed from Britain.

Yurdugal lost her final appeal to remain in the UK before the House of Lords on Thursday.

Afterwards, human rights lawyer Aamer Anwar lodged a fresh application for asylum on behalf of the family's four children, aged seven to 14, but the Home Office refused to consider it, he said.

Family lawyers say Yurdugal's husband Salih has not been heard of since he was sent back to Turkey via Germany last March.

Mr Anwar, who represented the family while they were held at the Dungavel detention centre in Lanarkshire, Scotland, said: "We are fighting right up until the last moment and we have appealed to the Home Secretary to think again.

"This is not simply an issue of him posturing and talking tough on asylum-seekers - these are children's lives that they are destroying.

"They are traumatised. They have been held behind bars for a year. Surely the Home Secretary should decide that because of what this Government has done to these children they should be allowed to remain."

The Ay family has made a series of applications for asylum since fleeing Turkey in 1988. They arrived in Britain hidden in a lorry four years ago.

They have been held at Dungavel since last July, where they were sent shortly after their mother absconded rather than be sent to Germany with her husband.

The children are believed to hold the record for minors held in an immigration detention centre.

Scottish socialist MSP Rosie Kane was due to fly to Berlin to urge the German government to prevent the family being returned to Turkey.

The family had threatened to refuse to board their plane toda.