Daesh replacing killed militants with children: US colonel
The Daesh terrorist group is increasingly training child soldiers to fill its ranks so that it can replace thousands of its militants killed in US-led coalition air strikes, a US military spokesman says.
According to Colonel Pat Ryder of the US military's Central Command, the number of boy soldiers has been rising constantly with the Takfiri group using some of them to even kill prisoners.
"We've seen this trend continuing to increase for a while now where they're having to, through forced conscription, recruit children as young as 10 to go fight, which is obviously disgusting and illegal across the board,” Ryder told reporters on Friday.
This move is indicative of their desperate efforts to "replace the losses that they've experienced on the battlefield," he added.
He noted that the "overwhelming majority" of Daesh (ISIL) militants are "military-aged males."
His comments came a day after the group released a video purporting to show six of its child soldiers killing Syrian security forces captured by the terrorists.
The Daesh terrorists, who were initially trained by the CIA in Jordan in 2012 to destabilize the Syrian government, now control large parts of Iraq and Syria.
They have been carrying out horrific acts of violence such as public decapitations and crucifixions against all, communities, including Shias, Sunnis, Kurds, and Christians.
The United States and some of its allies have been conducting airstrikes against what they say are Daesh positions in Iraq since August 2014. Some members of the US-led coalition have also been pounding purported Daesh positions inside Syria since last September without any authorization from Damascus or a UN mandate.
Observers say while the US and its allies claim they are fighting against terrorist groups like Daesh, they in fact helped create and train those organizations to advance their policies in the Middle East.
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