U.S.: Al Qaeda In Iraq Training Children
Videotapes seized during U.S. raids on suspected al Qaeda 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.
It's no game, reports CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann. One recent killer in Iraq was just 11 years old.
"He went into the home of a sheikh in the Anbar province with a box of candy that blew up, killing several," said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a U.S. military spokesman.
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.
CBS News terrorism analyst Paul Kurtz discussed the new Al Qaeda-related development on The Early Show. To see the interview, .
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 Qaeda in Iraq was increasingly using children for sinister means.
"Al Qaeda in Iraq wants to poison the next generation of Iraqis," Rear Adm. Smith 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 Qaeda," he said.
Kids have often been used as props and pawns, reports Strassmann. In one jihadi video, a boy carries a mortar round. He's 6 years old - too small to reach the mortar without a boost.
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 Qaeda.
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 Qaeda," 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.
In other developments:
The top uniformed military officer on Wednesday described a tired U.S. military force, worn thin by operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and unlikely to come home in large numbers anytime soon. The assessment comes as President Bush decides whether to continue troop reductions in Iraq - possibly endangering fragile security gains made in recent months - or not, and risk straining ground forces further. "The well is deep, but it is not infinite," Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "We must get Army deployments down to 12 months as soon as possible. People are tired."
Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Wednesday that the top military commander in Iraq is not the sole adviser on Iraq and suggested that President Bush this year will be confronted with competing views on what to do next in the war. Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he will weigh in, along with the head of U.S. Central Command and the service chiefs. "It's clear that Gen. Petraeus' views will have a strong impact, but I think the president will need to hear other points of view as well," Gates said.
Members of a pro-Kurdish political party set up camp near the Iraq border to protest Turkish military raids on Kurdish rebels based on the other side. Separately, a roadside bomb injured two police officers in a border area where guerrillas are active, local media reported Wednesday.
The U.S. military said Wednesday that its troops, along with Iraqi forces, killed seven suspected insurgents and detained 34 others in five days of raids across Iraq.
A roadside bomb exploded near a police convoy transporting suspected Shiite militia fighters south of Baghdad Wednesday, killing four passers-by and wounding nine other people, police said. At least 19 people were killed or found dead Wednesday across the country. The roadside bombing was an apparent attempt to free the 10 detainees who were linked to the Mahdi Army militia that is nominally loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, according to police Brig. Gen. Ghassan Mohammed Ali.
© 2009 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report. 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.
It's no game, reports CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann. One recent killer in Iraq was just 11 years old.
"He went into the home of a sheikh in the Anbar province with a box of candy that blew up, killing several," said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a U.S. military spokesman.
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.
CBS News terrorism analyst Paul Kurtz discussed the new Al Qaeda-related development on The Early Show. To see the interview, .
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 Qaeda in Iraq was increasingly using children for sinister means.
"Al Qaeda in Iraq wants to poison the next generation of Iraqis," Rear Adm. Smith 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 Qaeda," he said.
Kids have often been used as props and pawns, reports Strassmann. In one jihadi video, a boy carries a mortar round. He's 6 years old - too small to reach the mortar without a boost.
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 Qaeda.
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 Qaeda," 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.
In other developments:
Popular on CBSNews.com
- British flower show in full bloom 16 Photos
- Iran hangs alleged U.S., Israeli spies
- Hezbollah suffers heavy losses fighting inside Syria
- Russia shows accused U.S. spy heading home
- Bungled bank heist in Israel leaves gunman, 4 more dead
- Some Swedish youth riot over police shooting death
- N. Korea fires 6th projectile into sea
- Two imprisoned over killing Malcolm X's grandson
Speaking of toons, to have seen the tapes and claim they are a work of fiction speaks volumes of your moral depravity; either that or you live in an imaginary world.
There are apparently some silly heads in the world who believe that a US-created mystery group whose name variously means ''the base'' or ''the toilet'' is trying to win friends and influence people in Iraq by randomly blowing them up...and--GET THIS!!--modest Moslems that they are...they don''t want to brag about it...
Instead, I believe, these are members of the a very secretive and feared sect of Moslems...the dreaded TOON TOWN MOSLEMS!... these Moslems can do whatever the cartoonist or propagandist wants them to do...child warriors?--you got it!...mentally deficient burqa-wearing suicide bombers who hate pet markets?--Boom!...Take over the world and kill all the infidels?--We got ''em for you! Fly giant passenger planes into buildings?--Can''t fly?--NO problem-o for a TOON TOWN MOSLEM!--They can even walk away from the catastrophe!--AND!!--magically remain on the FBI list of those who suicided into the WTC!...The only way you can kill them is with "Dip"...best alert Fearless Leader... the recipe calls for "Dip"...not "Dipsh*ts" like the men and women he has around him...
Videos are made of the martyrdom operation as proof to the family that their loved one is going to heaven. And the family will brag about it. Apparently you don''t understand how Al-Qaeda works.
What''s next from Mark Strassmann?
Retarded children "al-Qaeda-in-Iraq" fighters?
Maybe they can use the ones that were "rescued" in the Lara Logan reports, as actors for the video.
-------------
----------------------------------------
---------------------------
Posted by FeelFree1 at 09:59 PM : Feb 07, 2008
+ report abuse
***************
The leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Hamza...
Hadi Mizban -- Associated Press
...The leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Hamza al-Muhajer, is shown on video during a 2006 briefing by Iraqi national security...
*************
you want me to go to al-jazeera website and get you more?..I can get tons
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted by FeelFree1 at 09:59 PM : Feb 07, 2008
+ report abuse
***************
I dare you to find a single verifiable claim that al queda is NOT in Iraq..
Did you figure it out yet?
Re: "Feelfree1, again you weakly challenge the validity of this news and again you offer nothing to support your propaganda."
O.K. Here are a couple of observations for you, just off the top of my head, just looking at one B.S. segment of this rancid propaganda piece from Mark Strassman-
Re: "It''''s no game, reports CBS News correspondent Mark Strassmann. One recent killer in Iraq was just 11 years old."
"He went into the home of a sheikh in the Anbar province with a box of candy that blew up, killing several," said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a U.S. military spokesman."
Why would this alleged child be invited into this house, unless they knew him?
If they knew him, and were friends with him, why would this alleged child blow them up?
If they didn''''t know him, how would they know that he was 11 years old?
If the candy box exploded, strongly enough to kill the people in the structure, how could there be anything left of the box to identify it as a box, much less a candy box?
If the occupants were killed, then who described the event?
Please put on your thinking cap, "sevenveils".
My best evidence that this is a black propaganda article?
It was written by Mark Strassmann. I dare you to find a single verifiable claim that this man has ever made about the imaginary group known as "al-Qaeda-in-Iraq".
Look at these poor angels. They''ve been forced to hold weapons. They were forced to go to madrasa.
They wouldn''t hurt a flea - ok - a US solder or two - but fleas are safe.
We all know 15 year olds that are thrown into Gitmo are waterboarded daily! I mean that poor Canadian citizen that was 15 and just happened to be in the area where the fire fight was taking place in Afghanstan, oh that poor soul. He is SO very innocent.
I say he''s lucky co1 didn''t decide to shoot him in the head too.