His discovery comes less than 24 hours after another child suicide bomber succeeded in killing 51 at a Turkish wedding party.
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The demining firm began operations in Ramadi in April, after Iraqi forces liberated the city from the Islamic State group, which left behind thousands of explosive devices.
An Iraqi security official confirmed to DPA that a suicide bombing had been prevented in Kirkuk on Sunday and that an attack on Shi’ites in the area had injured three people. As many as 22 of those killed by the blast were under the age of 14.
“Police forces managed to stop a bomber thought to be as young as 12”, Kirkuk police chief Brigadier General Khattab Omar Aref told reporters.
Security officials said the boy is 16 years old, though local media reports said he is much younger.
The recent incidents have confirmed that these children are not only used in execution of prisoners as shown in the footage, but are also used to perform their deadly acts. These so-called cubs of the caliphate are inducted into ISIS’ campaign of violence through myriad grim training practices, with children as young as 8 reconditioned to follow the terror group’s ideology, according to United Nations reports. “They also attract less attention and less suspicion than male adults”. They showed a bomb belt strapped around his stomach, covered by a Barcelona football shirt bearing the striker Lionel Messi’s name. “Islamic State is mobilising children and youth at an alarming rate”. In that attack, only the bomber died.
Iraqi security forces removed Sunday night an explosive belt from a child.
He is being interrogated and said he traveled to Kirkuk from the Islamic State-held city of Mosul but is “not a hundred percent” mentally, Qadir said.
According to the Unicef report, almost two thirds of all the child attackers they tracked were girls. Charu Lata Hogg of the human rights group Child Soldiers International, said that governments’ efficiency to control terrorist attacks plays a significant role in the issue.
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“This is one of the defining features of this conflict”, said Thierry Delvigne-Jean of the agency’s west and central Africa office.
