(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Militants are selling abducted Iraqi children at markets as sex slaves, and killing other youth, including by crucifixion or burying them alive, a United Nations watchdog said on Wednesday.
Iraqi boys aged under 18 are increasingly being used by the militant group as suicide bombers, bomb makers, informants or human shields to protect facilities against US-led air strikes, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child said.
"We are really deeply concerned at torture and murder of those children, especially those belonging to minorities, but not only from minorities," committee expert Renate Winter told a news briefing. "The scope of the problem is huge."
"We have had reports of children, especially children who are mentally challenged, who have been used as suicide bombers, most probably without them even understanding," Winter told Reuters. "There was a video placed (online) that showed children at a very young age, approximately eight years of age and younger, to be trained already to become child soldiers."
The UN body, which reviewed Iraq's record for the first time since 1998, denounced "the systematic killing of children belonging to religious and ethnic minorities, including several cases of mass executions of boys, as well as reports of beheadings, crucifixions of children and burying children alive".
A large number of children have been killed or badly wounded during air strikes or shelling by Iraqi security forces, while others had died of "dehydration, starvation and heat", it said.
A militant group has committed "systematic sexual violence", including "the abduction and sexual enslavement of children", it said.
"Children of minorities have been captured in many places... sold in the market place with tags, price tags on them, they have been sold as slaves," Winter said, giving no details.
The 18 independent experts who worked on the report called on Iraqi authorities to take all necessary measures to "rescue children" under the control of militant groups and to prosecute perpetrators of crimes.
"There is a duty of a state to protect all its children. The point is just how are they going to do that in such a situation?", Winter said.
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