Al-Qaeda-linked militants have transformed a Government-run school in the restive tribal region of Pakistan into a nursery for suicide bombers, training children as young as nine-year-old.

“It was like factory that had been recruiting nine to 12-year-old boys and turning them into suicide bombers,” Maj Gen Tariq Khan, the commander of the division that captured the area, was quoted in The Daily Telegraph on Tuesday as saying.

The camp was located in a territory in South Waziristan where the notorious Pakistani Taliban commander, Baitullah Mehsud, operates.

At another location, military investigators found film footage on a DVD that they believed depicts children at the school being trained in suicide bombing.

The footage, shown to journalists, contained images of a masked teacher instructing rows of school children who wore white headbands inscribed with Quranic verses.

Maj Gen Athar Abbas, the army’s chief spokesman, said that the school and a hospital had been taken over by militants “to prepare children for suicide attacks and for making improved explosive devices (IEDS)”.

During operations in the area soldiers had rounded up over 50 boys who were undergoing suicide attack training, the report said. Many of the boys had been kidnapped.

Most of them were from the ethnic Pushtun belt of the NWFP and some were locals from South Waziristan.