The three boys in black hoods and green T-shirts hold Kalashnikovs as the youngest shouts to the camera in a pre-pubescent voice, “Fight them and God will torture them through your hands.”

The videotape, found during a US military raid on December 4 in Iraq’s Diyala province, also shows about 20 boys in dark blue sports jerseys jumping walls and storming houses. One scene has them pulling a man from a car at gunpoint, making him kneel on the ground and pressing the barrel of a black pistol against his neck.

The US military describe the footage shown at a news conference on Wednesday as a training video also meant to recruit the next generations of Al Qaeda in Iraq. It was one of five videos found at the site in Khan Bani Sad showing boys, most believed to be younger than 11, being trained in how to carry out kidnappings and killings, the military said. Three suspected A Qaeda in Iraq fighters were detained and two others slain in the raid, it added.

“We believe the purpose of these videos was to produce training films to be promulgated throughout Iraq encouraging other youth, and presumably their parents, to begin the necessary training and indoctrination toward becoming al-Qaida terrorists proficient at carrying out violence against fellow Iraqis,” Rear Adm. Gregory Smith told reporters in Baghdad. “Al Qaeda often refers to the children as the new generation of the mujahedeen,” he said.

Smith said they did not know when the video shown on Wednesday was filmed and speculated the children featured were probably from clans that belonged to Al Qaeda in Iraq. He said the military did not know if the video proved that the children shown were being used as combatants.

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