Pakistani Military: Qaeda Terrorists Are Training Child Suicide Bombers

Islamabad, Pakistan — Militants linked to Al Qaeda have set up training camps to teach children how to conduct suicide attacks, the Pakistani military said yesterday.

The army said it had overrun one such camp in territory where Baitullah Mehsud, a notorious Pakistani Taliban commander, operates. Militants had transformed a government-run school near the village of Spinkai in South Waziristan into what one officer described as a "nursery for preparing suicide bombers."

The school was part of a large compound above the village that included a small mosque.

The commander of the division that captured the area, Major General Tariq Khan, said: "It was like a factory that had been recruiting 9- to 12-year-old boys and turning them into suicide bombers."

He told the Dawn newspaper that at another location military investigators found film footage on a DVD that they believed depicts children at the school receiving suicide training.

The footage, which was shown to journalists, contained images of a masked teacher instructing rows of schoolchildren who wore white headbands inscribed with Koranic verses.