Videos show insurgents training boys, U.S. says

BAGHDAD — The three boys in black hoods and green T-shirts hold Kalashnikov assault 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 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 described the footage shown at a news conference Wednesday as a training video also meant to recruit the next generations of Al Qaeda in Iraq insurgents. It was one of five videos found at the site in Khan Bani Saad showing boys, most believed to be younger than 11, being trained to carry out kidnappings and killings, the military said. Three suspected Al Qaeda in Iraq fighters were detained and two killed in the raid, it said.

“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. Greg Smith told reporters in Baghdad. “Al Qaeda often refers to the children as the ‘new generation of the mujahedin,’ ” or holy warriors.

Smith said the U.S. military did not know when the video was made, and he speculated that the children featured probably were from clans linked 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 two teenage boys recently blew themselves up in suicide attacks. Children have long been used as lookouts for fighters and teenagers have engaged in attacks, the military has said.

In another raid in Diyala province, 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 rifles, Smith said. The second raid was carried out Dec. 8 in Muqdadiya.

Smith also showed an image of a young boy wearing what the military believed was a suicide vest.

The U.S. military says that it had 600 children in custody and that militants were using children more and more.

Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed Askari said he suspected that militants were abducting more children for ransom and to use as foot soldiers. At the news conference, he showed video of a raid last week in Kirkuk, where Iraqi soldiers rescued an 11-year-old kidnapped boy.

Smith also said there had been a rise in suicide bombings by women. 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.

A U.S. soldier was killed by a roadside bomb Wednesday in Baghdad, the military said. Since the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003, 3,950 U.S. service members have been killed, according to icasualties.org.

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Times staff writers Said Rifai and Saif Hameed contributed to this report.