Amos: ISIL Extremists Recruit, Train Hundreds of Children for Combat in Syria

UNITED NATIONS– Hundreds of children, some as young as five years old, are being trained for combat in a military camp in Ar-Raqqah, Syria, by the terrorists of the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, UN Chief’s Undersecretary for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos has told the Security Council on Monday, RIA Novosti reported on Tuesday.

According to Amos, some 350 children undergo training at the ISIL camp in Ar-Raqqah and “reports of children killed or public executed, crucified, beheaded and stoned to death by ISIL, have increased in recent months”.

She added that people from Ayn al-Arab (Kobani) in northern Syria recently reported the capture of young girls by ISIL terrorists for sexual purposes.”

According to Amos, girls in Raqqa are forced to marry ISIL fighters or are sold into sexual slavery.

“Parents are terrified of their unmarried daughters being forced to marry ISIL fighters in areas under their control. Women captured as slaves by ISIL have been sold in markets in Ar-Raqqa. Some are sold to individual men, others are kept in ISIL rest houses and exposed to multiple rapes by fighters returning from the battlefield,” Amos told the UN Security Council.

She urged the UNSC and the international community to attain a lasting political solution to the crisis in Syria.

H. Mustafa