More than 20 of the victims were children under 14, a Turkish official said Monday.
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The boy, who police have said was 12 or 13, cried as he was stopped by police in Kirkuk, Iraq, less than 24 hours after another child bomber killed 51 people at a wedding party.
The observatory said DAESH had used 18 children as suicide bombers so far that year.
Turkish President Recep Erdogan called the assault a “heinous” terror act and blamed the so-called Islamic State group (formerly known as IS, ISIS/ISIL) for the atrocity.
Sana’a Mehaidli, a Syrian who is believed to be the world’s first female suicide bomber, was 16-years old when she killed two Israeli soldiers in a suicide attack in southern Lebanon in 1987. These so-called cubs of the caliphate are inducted into ISIS’ campaign of violence through a myriad of grim training practices, with children as young as 8 reconditioned to follow the terror group’s ideology, according to United Nations reports.
Much of the area is littered by bombs and booby traps rigged by IS to prevent movements by Iraqi security forces. A bomber – believed be a teenager – detonated his explosives as officials were handing out trophies to players after the tournament, killing 29 and wounding 60. In a recent report Unicef says thousands of children have been abducted in Iraq and estimates that one in five bombings carried out in Nigeria, Cameroon and Chad are done by children.
Most militant groups operating during the Second Intifada (2001-2004) claimed not to use children as suicide bombers, but there are differences over the definition of what constitutes a “child” combatant.
Oil-rich Kirkuk has seen a rise in ethnic tensions following the Islamic State group’s blitz across northern and western Iraq in 2014, and now Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen all have competing claims to the area.
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That tactic has been used before in Iraq, where children or even mentally disadvantaged adults have been dispatched as unwitting bomb couriers into markets and checkpoints before they are blown up from afar.
