More than 50 child soldiers recruited by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group in Syria have been killed since the beginning of this year, a monitoring group reported. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Wednesday it had documented the deaths of 52 child soldiers, all under the age of 16, who had been part of ISIL’s “Cubs of the Caliphate” programme. Aljazeera reports:
The programme provides intense military and religious training to children throughout ISIL’s areas of control in Syria, the Britain-based Observatory said. As many as 31 were killed in July alone, in explosions, clashes, and air strikes by Syria’s regime and the US-led coalition.
The child soldiers are used to man checkpoints or gather intelligence from areas outside ISIL control, but ISIL has been increasingly using them to execute prisoners or conduct suicide attacks. So far this year, ISIL has used eight children as suicide bombers, most recently in its fight against Kurdish militia in northeastern Syria.
“This shows that Daesh is exploiting the suffering of the Syrian people,” said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman, using the Arabic acronym for ISIL. “When a child reaches the point of becoming a suicide bomber, this means that he’s been completely brainwashed,” Abdel Rahman told AFP.
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