The 5-year olds trained to fight for the Islamic State

Barely five-years-old and armed with a hand gun, a blonde-haired toddler runs through the streets in Syria.
Dodging pretend enemy fire as he moves from post to post, he could be playing an innocent game of cops and robbers.
But the white-skinned boy is not playing games – he is being trained by Islamic Militants to fight.

Indoctrination: A boy, thought to be around five, is being ‘trained’ by ISIS as he plays with a pellet gun

Dressed in jogging bottoms, pumps and a jumper, at one point the boy pauses to load his weapon.

The chilling footage was shared online by Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, an activist group which documents the shocking violence and oppression imposed by jihadists.

Charlie Winter, a spokesman for the Quilliam Foundation Think Tank, said: ‘This video is yet more evidence of Islamic State seeking to indoctrinate children from a very young age in an attempt to entrench its hold over the region.

‘Such footage is worrying, in particular because it renders apparent the fact that IS’ legacy will be long-term, even if it was to collapse tomorrow.’

The video, titled ISIS training children to fight in Raqqa, opens with the line: ‘That which God wills, there is no power but with Allah.’

ISIS training children to fight in Raqqa

In training: The fair-haired boy laughs as he runs through the streets of Raqqa, dodging pretend enemies


Soldier to be: The boy with the gun runs from corner to corner across the street and ducks for cover while pretending to engage in fire with the enemy in the Islamic State stronghold

Get them young: ISIS are now allegedly focusing on children, in order to create a generation of fighters whose idea of extremism and acts of terrorism come second nature

It shows another boy of a similar age wearing an orange jumper and looking into the camera, while what is believed to be IS militants stand by and watch.

The boy with the gun runs from corner to corner across the street and ducks for cover while pretending to engage in fire with the enemy in the Islamic State stronghold.

He is not holding a real firearm, but a pellet gun, and had the video not been set in the middle of ISIS territory, it would have been easy to dismiss it as young boys playing a game of soldier.

Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently operates from inside the city, viewed by many as the ‘capital’ of ISIS, with a smaller number of activists outside its borders who communicate with the outside world.

Risking their lives, the group use their mobile phones to film and take photographs of crimes committed by ISIS in Raqqa.

Abu Ibrahim Raqqawi, a 22-year-old former medical student who fought against Syrian leader Al-Assad, has been forced to flee Raqqa after documenting an ISIS crucifixion.

‘We were activists against the Assad regime when we started, but after our city was freed, and ISIS took over our freedom, we just decided to launch this campaign to expose all the crimes that ISIS do,’ he told VICE News.

The chilling footage was shared online by Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently, an activist group which documents the shocking violence and oppression imposed by jihadists

‘Most of the people of Raqqa are against ISIS, maybe 90 percent. The other 10, ISIS gives them money, power, and because of that they want it in the city.’

It also emerged extremists have set up a school in Syria called Osama Bin Laden. The religious school, named after the former leader of Al Qaeda, was opened in Manbij, a small town in the north.

The facility offers religious instruction classes for residents living in the town and classes in Islamic State’s extremist version of Sharia law.

Last week photographs emerged showing young Syrian children being trained at a military camp run by terrorists.

The images, understood to have been taken at a school near the capital of Raqqa, show children being taught basic combat and survival skills, learning how to use rifles and being given lessons in extremist ideology.

They were shared online by the same activist group, which said the Al-Sharea school was specifically run to provide militant training to young males under the age of 16.

Its objective was said to be to distort the views of children from an early age to create a generation of fighters whose idea of extremism and acts of terrorism come second nature.