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‘Al Qaeda turning kids into suicide bombers’
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NewsByte on 20 May, 2008 02:59:53
 
London, May 20: Al Qaeda-linked militants have transformed a government-run
school in the restive tribal region of Pakistan into a nursery for suicide
bombers, training children as young as nine-year-old.
"It was like factory that had been recruiting nine to 12-year-old boys and
turning them into suicide bombers," Maj. Gen. Tariq Khan, the commander of the
division that captured the area, was quoted in the Daily Telegraph on Tuesday as
saying.
The camp was located in a territory in South Waziristan where the notorious
Pakistani Taliban commander, Baitullah Mehsud, operates.
At another location, military investigators found film footage on a DVD that
they believed depicts children at the school being trained in suicide bombing.
The footage, shown to journalists, contained images of a masked teacher
instructing rows of school children who wore white headbands inscribed with
Quranic verses. Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, the Army’s chief spokesman, said that
the school and a hospital had been taken over by militants "to prepare children
for suicide attacks and for making improved explosive devices (IEDS)."
During operations in the area soldiers had rounded up over 50 boys who were
undergoing suicide attack training, the report said. Many of the boys had been
kidnapped. Most of them were from the ethnic Pushtun belt of the North West
Frontier Province and some were locals from South Waziristan. "The boys were
handed to an NGO to be looked at," Maj. Gen. Abbas said.
He said in the operation in January the Army found jackets and ball bearings
used for use in suicide attacks." Since January, 2007, Pakistan has witnessed
over 80 suicide attacks that have killed more than 1,000 people. (PTI)