Voice of America News reports: “Islamic State allegedly has been using child suicide bombers to target opponents in the Syrian civil war, officials and activists in Syria say.

Kurdish military officials this week in the region of Afrin in northern Syria captured two children who say they were trying to detonate themselves in a residential area.

‘Their [IS] goal was for the children to be killed by our forces at a checkpoint,’ said Piran Shirwan, an official of the local Kurdish security agency.

The two children wore explosive belts that were hidden under IS military uniforms. They were stopped at a Kurdish checkpoint outside the city of Afrin before they were able to blow themselves up, the official told VOA.

‘A guy named Ibrahim convinced us to join Daesh [IS],’ one of the boys told VOA. He said he was from the central Syrian province of Hama, 150 kilometers from Afrin. Authorities said he was 11 years old.

His 10-year-old companion told VOA that they were armed and trained for conducting a suicide attack…”