Al Qaeda has opened a terror training facility in Syria and is preparing teenagers to wage jihad, according to a video taken inside the training camp that emerged online earlier this week.
Armed children and teenagers in black masks can be seen chanting Islamist slogans and praising militancy in a video said be filmed at the Khalifa Youth Camp in al-Bukamal, Syria, according to a translation of the propaganda film by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
Masked children in army fatigues file out of a bus and line up to be handed various weapons.
A trainer can be seen handing the children rifles and draping them with ammunition as they chant, "There is no god but Allah" and "Allah loves those who fight," according to MEMRI’s translation of the film.
Other children are handed rocket propelled grenade launchers as they run down the street waving a black flag affiliated with al Qaeda and jihadist causes.
Other scenes in nearly 8-minute film depict the teenagers training in hand-to-hand combat, as well as small arms training and long-range shooting.
The children practice shooting weapons at a target of Syrian President Bashar al Assad.
The film highlights the growing threat that al Qaeda and other radicals pose in war-torn Syria. Jihadi fighters have combined with Syrian rebels creating a hodge-podge of fighters that Western policy makers have trouble differentiating between.
Americans, Europeans, and other radicals have been flowing into Syria in order to train in the ways of jihad, according to experts who testified on Capitol Hill earlier this month.
"Syria is becoming a training ground for foreign fighters," Seth Jones, a former U.S. Special Operations liaison, told lawmakers during a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on May 22.
"Syria is attracting a cadre of foreign fighters who could return home with the ability and intention" to commit terrorism in America and Europe, said Jones, currently a counterterrorism expert for RAND, a think-tank that provides analysis to the U.S. Armed Forces. "An increasing number of [Western] fighters have travelled to Syria … to fight against the Assad regime."
Additionally, the children depicted in the most recent al Qaeda film can be seen in a classroom studying radical Islamic ideology.
Back on the training field a child holding a hand grenade says: "In the name of Allah. Prayers and blessings upon His prophet Muhammad, and his family, companions, and followers. This is a message from us, the youth of the Khalifa in the frontier land of the Levant to our sheiks, the sheiks of jihad of the Islamic nation, and especially to our Emir, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi [a leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq]."
"We continue to the path of jihad," the child continues. "We will not lay down our weapons before we attain one of two good things: victory or martyrdom."