Dramatic photos Monday showed police in Iraq arresting a boy and uncovering an explosive belt around his waist, as the child reportedly claimed terrorists kidnapped him and forced him to blow himself up.
(FOX)- The arrest took place two days after investigators said a bomber between 12 and 14 years of age detonated explosives at a wedding party in southeastern Turkey, killing at least 51 people on behalf of the Islamic State terror group.
ISIS claimed responsibility for a separate blast Monday at a Shiite mosque in Kirkuk, Iraq, but made no mention of the child. Still, the group controls an army of child soldiers, which it calls “cubs of the caliphate,” and seeks to re-educate children at ISIS-run schools, drugging some of them and indoctrinating them with the group’s own radical version of Islam, according to analysts.
Local footage aired on Kurdistan 24 TV showed a group of police officers in Kirkuk holding the young boy while two men cut off a belt of explosives. After they removed the belt, officers rushed the boy into a police truck and drove away. The child’s exact age was unclear.
The boy was apprehended on Sunday night, less than an hour after the mosque attack, Kirkuk police department spokesman Col. Avrasiya Kamil Wais told The Associated Press. In the mosque attack, only the bomber died and two people were wounded.
“The boy claimed during interrogation that he had been kidnapped by masked men who put the explosives on him and sent him to the area,” Kirkuk intelligence official Brig. Chato Fadhil Humadi said.
ISIS previously has drugged its fighters to give them jolts of energy and eliminate any feelings of pain, a Peshmerga official told FoxNews.com earlier this year. “The fighters take the drug and they don’t know where they are or what they are doing. They are just shooting and fighting,” the official near the Mosul Dam said. “They lose their minds. Some can be shot 20 times before they go down.”
The terror group commonly exposes children to violent acts, including beheadings, as part of a concerted effort to build a new generation of militants, analysts add. ISIS videos have shown boys killing the terror group’s opponents through beheadings and shootings.