ISIS punished two children who refused to kill civilians by cutting off their hands.
The children, believed to be about 10 to 12 years old, were part of a group of kids that the Islamic State had been training in Nineveh.
"The Islamic State's leaders issued orders to train a group of children on fighting in the group's camps in Nables neighborhood, in the western side of Nineveh," a source told Alsumaria News.
The children reportedly refused to follow orders to execute two civilians in front of their families. As a consequence for their disobedience, members of ISIS chopped off their hands.
"Members of the Islamic State terrorist group amputated the hands of two children, for refusing to carry out the execution sentence on two civilians in front of their families," the source said. "The age of the abused children ranges between 10 and 12 years old."
ISIS is known to brainwash and train children, dubbed as "cubs of the caliphate," to fight and sometimes to serve as suicide bombers. The terror group uses various methods to convince children to fight for them.
In November, a report revealed that textbooks used in ISIS-run "schools" were riddled with photos of weapons. A mathematics textbook, for example, used pictures of AK-47s in a lesson about addition.
An English textbook was integrated with ideas from the Sharia law, while a grammar book included an activity in which students were instructed to construct sentences with the words bomb, explode and vest.
Last year, a teen suicide bomber who was ordered to attack an Iraqi stadium was caught by security forces after he hesitated to carry out the command.
The 15-year-old boy told authorities that he and other young kids were taught "how to use a Kalashnikov and a PKC machine gun."
They were also bombarded with teachings about heaven.
"There were four older men who would teach us about heaven and stuff like that," the boy told Sky News. "Twenty-four hours a day they'd teach us about this stuff. There were 60 of us born from 2002 onwards."
"They would scare us and would show videos of beheadings and stuff like that," he added.
As the battle for Mosul intensified, ISIS had used its children soldiers in a desperate attempt to fight the advancing Iraqi troops as their own numbers dwindled. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said hundreds of children soldiers have been killed because of this, according to News Corp Australia.
"This will raise the death toll to at least 480 Syrian fighters killed in the ranks of the Islamic State since the start of the battles in the Mosul area, among them more than 300 child soldiers from the 'lion cubs of the caliphate,'" the organization said.
