Child Taliban Soldiers Trained to Target British Soldiers

The boy soldiers stand in line before being handed rifles and taught to fire rocket-propelled grenades.

They spend their day being brainwashed to kill their Jihad training caught on film as part of an al-Qaeda recruitment drive.

The bewildered children, barely old enough to go to school, are forced to stand in circles stretching and exercising to try to give them strength to carry heavy ammunition.

They live in tents and say prayers before sleeping with weapons lying next to them. When their training is complete the children are filmed walking over the Pakistan-Afghanistan border right into a warzone.

The film shows one boy nodding nervously after he is asked: Are you prepared to die for Allah?

If he is killed, he will not be the first. In one section, the face of an 11-year-old soldier, named as Abdullah al-Rahim, is circled on the screen as he marches away.

Seconds later, images of his body wrapped in a white sheet appear, making him a martyr for al-Qaeda leaders determined to recruit thousands more children.

The footage was obtained by Sunday Mirror investigators after it was posted on an underground al-Qaeda website, which routinely trumpets the death of British soldiers killed by the Taliban.