Children Forced to Train as ’ISIL’ Militants, Executioners in Raqqa: The Independent

Local Editor

In a camp in Syria's Raqqa province, between 200 and 300 children are understood to be receiving training by so-called "Daesh" [ISIL] to become militants as well as executioners for the terrorist group, according to The Independent website on Thursday.

The camp is reserved for children under the age of 16 who are taught to support Daesh militant ideology, and are reportedly trained to handle Kalashnikov rifles and RPGs as part of their initial training, The Independent said.

The camps are advertised to parents as "boy scout clubs", but in reality are trained as suicide bombers and militants, Ibrahim al-Raqqawi, a Syrian activist, told the Telegraph.

"It's terrifying to see how these children change in a short time," Raqqawi told the Telegraph. "They are building a new generation of children who would do their bidding, including suicide bombings, without blinking."

He claimed the children, some of whom had been kidnapped by Daesh, are then forced to prove their worth by torturing or "killing a prisoner being held" by the extremist group, before they can "graduate" from the camp.

He provided photographs of children holding guns and practicing military manoeuvres which he claimed had been leaked to him by a Daesh militant inside the camp.

Furthermore, one father, who has not been named, told Syria Deeply that his 13-year-old son was forced to attend the children's training camp, and was threatened with being killed when he tried to stop his son from joining it.

His father said the camp's leaders were "brain washing the children" and forcing them to practice beheadings, which he discovered when his son returned home with a blond, blue-eyed doll and a large knife that he had been given to decapitate as homework.

He claimed the older children at the camp taught the younger boys how to behead the dolls, and anyone who did not complete the task were punished.

His father said, "...ISIL tried to teach our children that they should consider us infidels and cut off our heads."

Footage has since emerged from Syria demonstrating how children are exposed to weapons under Daesh, the website added.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team