02-06-2008, 07:16 AM
|
 |
Sr. Correspondent
|
|
Join Date: Nov 2007
Posts: 606
|
|
US says al-Qaida in Iraq using children
These people haven't got an ounce of shame! Does this ever sound like a familiar story?!
Quote:
US says al-Qaida in Iraq using children
By LAUREN FRAYER, Associated Press Writer2 hours, 18 minutes ago
Videotapes seized during U.S. raids on suspected al-Qaida in Iraq hide-outs show the terror group training young boys to kidnap and assassinate civilians, U.S. and Iraqi officials said Wednesday.
Footage aired for reporters showed an apparent training operation with black-masked boys — some of whom appeared to be about 10 years old — storming a house and holding guns to the heads of mock residents. Another tape showed a young boy wearing a suicide vest and posing with automatic weapons.
But U.S. and Iraqi officials said they could offer no estimate on how many children have fallen under the terror group's control. They named just a handful of attacks blamed on women or children.
The American military said some of the tapes were found in December during a U.S. raid in Khan Bani Saad, northeast of Baghdad, and said it indicated a pattern that al-Qaida in Iraq was increasingly using children for sinister means.
"Al-Qaida in Iraq wants to poison the next generation of Iraqis," Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a U.S. military spokesman, told reporters Wednesday inside the heavily guarded Green Zone. "It is offering children as the new generation of mujahedeen," he said, using the Arabic term for holy warriors.
"We believe this video is used as propaganda to send out to recruit other boys ... and to send a broader message across Iraq to indoctrinate youth into al-Qaida," he said.
Other scenes from the Khan Bani Saad video showed masked boys forcing a man off his bicycle at gunpoint and stopping a car and kidnapping its driver along a dusty country road. At one point the boys — wearing soccer jerseys with ammunition slung across their chests — sit in a circle on the floor, chanting slogans in support of al-Qaida.
Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman Mohammed al-Askari told reporters that militants are kidnapping more and more Iraqi children, though he could not offer details or numbers.
"This is not only to recruit them, but also to demand ransom to fund the operations of al-Qaida," al-Askari said.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military said Wednesday that its troops, along with Iraqi forces, detained 20 suspected insurgents in four days of raids across Iraq.
Also Wednesday, a roadside bomb exploded near a police convoy transporting suspected Shiite militia fighters south of Baghdad, killing four passers-by and wounding nine other people, police said. At least a dozen people were killed or found dead Wednesday across the country.
more:
___
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080206/ap_on_...jEVZjqEev8UewgF
|
__________________
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4x0bU...watch_response
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZL0C2QvqIlo#
"The courageous over the infidels, make war for Allah and are not afraid... This is the depiction of the army of Allah that will come at Allah's decree, from here or from there, to liberate these lands from the defilement of the Jews, for Allah was angry with them in his book and called them once 'monkeys,' once 'swine,' and once 'donkeys.'" (Palestinian TV, March 30, 2001)
|
Similar Threads
Linear Mode
