ISIL giving children weapons training and make them suicide bombers
File photo shows a teenager recruited by the militants in Syria to fight against government forces. (Photo: AP)
Beirut: Militant groups in Syria are recruiting children as young as 15 and sending them into battle after promising them a free education, a Human Rights Watch report said on Monday.
The report said that the ISIL, which has made rapid territorial gains across the border in Iraq, had given children weapons training in Syria and told them to carry out suicide bombings.
Citing personal accounts, the group also found evidence of children being mobilised by the more moderate western-backed Free Syrian Army, the al-Qaida-affiliated Nusra Front, the Islamic Front coalition, and security forces in Kurdish-controlled areas.
“The horrors of Syria's armed conflict are only made worse by throwing children into the front lines,” Priyanka Motaparthy, the author of the report which drew on the accounts of 25 children, said. It said 14-year-old youths had been used in support roles for the fighting.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-Assad monitoring group, said that relatives of kidnapped students in Syria fear that ISIL will use the children to carry out car bombs.
( Source : reuters )
Next Story
