Boys taught to kill in US-seized al-Qaida videos

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Associated Press

Posted online: Thursday , February 07, 2008 at 10:39:50
Updated: Thursday , February 07, 2008 at 10:57:34

Baghdad, February 7: Boys in soccer jerseys don black masks and grab weapons. They scramble over mud brick walls, blast down doors and hold guns to the heads of sleeping residents inside.

The US military says videos seized from suspected al-Qaida hide-outs show militants training children as young as 10 to kidnap and kill. It's a sign the terror network -hungry for recruits - may be using younger Iraqis in propaganda to lure the next generation of warriors.

Video tape shown to reporters yesterday depicted an apparent training session with black-masked boys – ammunition belts draped across their small chests - forcing a man off his bicycle at gunpoint and marching him off down a muddy lane. An off-camera voice instructs children with assault rifles into firing positions.

At one point, the boys huddle in a circle on an empty cement floor, solemnly pledging allegiance to al-Qaida.

"Al-Qaida in Iraq wants to poison the next generation of Iraqis," Rear Adm Gregory Smith, a US military spokesman, told reporters inside the Green Zone.

"It is offering children as the new generation of mujahedeen," he said, using the Arabic term for holy warriors. But US and Iraqi officials said they could offer no estimate of how many children have slipped into al-Qaida's grip. They named just a handful of attacks blamed on women or children, including twin pet market bombings on Friday in Baghdad in which officials said two mentally retarded teenage girls were strapped with remote-controlled explosives.

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