BAGHDAD — The three boys in black hoods and green T-shirts hold Kalashnikov rifles as the youngest shouts to the camera in a pre-pubescent voice, “Fight them and God will torture them through your hands.”
The videotape, found during a U.S. military raid Dec. 4 in Iraq’s Diyala province, also shows about 20 boys in dark-blue sports jerseys jumping walls and storming houses. One scene has them pulling a man from a car at gunpoint, making him kneel on the ground and pressing the barrel of a black pistol against his neck.
The U.S. military describes the footage shown at a news conference Wednesday as a training video also meant to recruit the next generations of al-Qaeda in Iraq. It was one of five videos found at the site in Khan Bani Sad showing boys, most believed to be younger than 11, being trained in how to carry out kidnappings and killings, the military said. Three suspected al-Qaeda in Iraq fighters were detained and two others slain in the raid, it added.
“We believe the purpose of these videos was to produce training films to be promulgated throughout Iraq encouraging other youth, and presumably their parents, to begin the necessary training and indoctrination toward becoming al-Qaeda terrorists proficient at carrying out violence against fellow Iraqis,” Rear Adm. Gregory Smith told reporters in Baghdad. “Al-Qaeda often refers to the children as the ‘new generation of the mujahedeen,’ ” or holy warriors.
Smith said they did not know when the video shown Wednesday was filmed and speculated the children featured were probably from clans that belonged to al-Qaeda in Iraq. He said the military did not know whether the video proved that the children shown were being used as combatants.
He noted that recently two teenage boys blew themselves up in suicide attacks.
Children have long been used as lookouts for fighters, and incidents of teenagers engaging in attacks have taken place in the past, the military has said.
In March, police said children were used in a car bombing in which the driver gained permission to park in a busy shopping area after pointing out that he was leaving his kids in the back seat. The children were killed along with three Iraqi bystanders.
Abu Anwar al-Obaidi, an al-Qaeda in Iraq member in Garma, east of Fallujah in Anbar province, said the videos were authentic but described the boys as orphans and beggars.
Some were the kidnapped children of Iraqi policemen and soldiers, he said.
“They should expect not only kids to be trained,” Obaidi said in a telephone interview with a Washington Post special correspondent. “We might even put bombs on animals and send them to checkpoints. The American forces will find it impossible to find a solution for this. They will be forced to kill kids, animals, which will bring shame on the American forces.”
Maj. Gen. Mohammed al-Askari, a spokesman for Iraq’s Defense Ministry, told reporters that the videos were a sign that al-Qaeda in Iraq was growing desperate. Askari also said that the group was kidnapping children but provided no further details or figures.
“This is not only to recruit them but also to demand ransom to fund the operations of al-Qaeda,” al-Askari said.
The U.S. and Iraqi officials also showed another video clip depicting Iraqi security forces last week rescuing an 11-year-old boy in Kirkuk who had been kidnapped by the insurgent group. The boy, they said, was being held for a $100,000 ransom.
In another raid in Diyala province, which remains a haven for al-Qaeda in Iraq, U.S. soldiers discovered a script outlining scenes in which children question and execute hostages, plant bombs and fire sniper rifles, Smith said. The second raid was carried out Dec. 8 in the town of Muqdadiyah.
Smith also showed an image of a young boy wearing a vest that the military believed was a suicide belt.
The U.S. military says that it has 600 children in custody and that militants were using children more and more as fighters.
Al-Askari said that he suspected militants were abducting more children for ransoms and also to use as foot soldiers.
Smith also said there had been an increase in suicide bombings by women in Iraq. Before 2007 only five women had committed such attacks. Since the beginning of last year, there have been at least 10 attacks involving women, four of them this year.
U.S. and Iraqi forces suspect that last weekend’s two suicide bombings at pet markets in Baghdad were carried out by two women with Down syndrome. However, there has been no way to substantiate the claims.
Al-Askari said that the Iraqi security forces had located the women’s families and Smith identified them as teenagers.
The Washington Post and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A look at some insurgent-linked material recovered by the U.S. military in Iraq
Dec. 8: In Muqdadiyah, north of Baghdad, U.S. troops find an Arabic movie script that includes scenes of terrorists training children, and children interrogating and executing victims.
June 16: The U.S. military discloses it found the ID cards for two missing soldiers in an al-Qaeda safe house near Samarra, more than 100 miles north of where they were last seen May 12.
June 2006: The U.S. military finds what it later called a “treasure trove” of information from safe houses after a U.S. airstrike June 7, 2006, killed al-Qaeda-linked Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi . Among the items is an 11-page letter dated from mid-December 2005 cautioning al-Zarqawi against the war he had declared on Shiite Muslims.
April 2006: U.S. military obtains videos that show al-Zarqawi looking confused as he tries to fire an automatic rifle that jams.
October 2005: The U.S. military says it intercepted a 13-page typed letter from al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri to al-Zarqawi outlining plans to force a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq, create an Islamic state there and spread jihad beyond Iraq. Al-Qaeda posted a statement on an Islamic website that the letter, dated July 9, 2005, was a U.S.-crafted fake.
The Associated Press
