Al-Qaeda camp teaches boys as young as five to bomb and kill

Nick Owens

Boys as young as five can barely hold up the machine guns and pistols in their hands as they take aim at ­imaginary targets in the Pakistan desert.

But this is no sick game, it is their first step along the way to becoming al-Qaeda terrorists as they are taught about military combat and how to launch suicide ­missions.

At hidden camps terrorist chiefs also use toys to teach the boys how they can blow up ­buildings and mount roadside bomb attacks.

One chilling image from a video filmed inside one camp shows children, barely old enough to be at school, crowding around a toy police car wired up to a bomb. And they all cheer as a baby-faced bomber presses a button on a mobile phone which blasts the car to ­pieces.

Militants are training hundreds of youngsters to become killers in the camp based in North ­Waziristan.

They are then battle-hardened on ­missions against coalition troops across the border in Afghanistan.

British commanders say Taliban fighters are increasingly using ­children like these as suicide ­bombers. They are also used as human shields during fire-fights.

The recruits are being trained by the al-Qaeda-linked East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM).

The ­terror group has cells in ­Afghanistan and Pakistan and have been responsible for more than 200 acts of terrorism across the globe in the last 20 years.

Now they are using madrassas – ­religious Islamic schools – as a cover to groom a new army of bombers.

Video footage passed to the Sunday Mirror shows the children learning to fire weapons, undergoing religious instruction and taking part in ­physical training. Dressed in camouflage uniform, the bewildered youngsters are made to stand in line before being handed AK-47 rifles.

SM Terror Tots 450 (Pic:SM)

The children come from families within the Turkic ethnic group of Uyghur people – Chinese Muslims who have fled and settled in Pakistan Afghanistan and Kazakhstan.

Many have been signed up to the ETIM as one aim of the terror group is to make China’s ­Xinjiang province – where 80 per cent of the population are Uyghur people – ­independent. Their mission has led already to a series of attacks against China.

Terrorism expert Neil Doyle said the video, which is being released as part of a Jihad ­recruitment drive, was “a shocking example of the sick tactics al-Qaeda use.”

It appears on a website called Revolution Muslim, which is run in the name of hate preachers Anjem Choudary, Omar Bakri ­Mohammad and ­Abdullah el-Faisal, all of whom have close links to the UK.

nick.owens@sundaymirror.co.uk



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