Boys coerced into training for al Qaeda human bomb attack

CNN:

Iraqi soldiers rounded up six teenagers in northern Iraq who were being trained, against their will, to carry out suicide bombings for al Qaeda in Iraq, the Interior Ministry said Monday.

Troops conducting house-to-house searches in Mosul found six teens, ages 15 to 18, who were being trained to perpetrate attacks against Iraqi security forces, said ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul Karim Khalaf.

Insurgents had threatened to kill the boys or their families if they refused to comply with the training, Deputy Interior Minister Kamal Ali Hussein told reporters.

"The Saudi insurgent threatened to rape our mothers and sisters, destroy our houses and kill our fathers if we did not cooperate with him," one of the youths told The Associated Press in Mosul.

The boys were rounded up as part of the Mother of Two Springs operation targeting al Qaeda in Iraq in Mosul and Nineveh province. The offensive has netted the detentions of more than 1,300 suspects.

The teens had been trained in recent weeks, Khalaf said.

A Saudi national -- a suspected al Qaeda in Iraq operative -- had been one of their trainers, but he was believed to have died in a military operation, Khalaf said. It is not known where or when he was killed.

The group of teens included the son of a female physician, the son of a college professor and four youths who belonged to families of poor vendors.

All six boys were taught how to carry out suicide attacks with explosive belts and a date was fixed for each one of them, Hussein said, adding that Iraqi soldiers had questioned the boys.

Iraqi troops rounded up the teens on the same day a suicide bomber drove a motorcycle into a checkpoint manned by police and a U.S.-backed Iraqi security group in northern Iraq, killing six people and wounding 22 others, local police said.

The suicide blast occurred Monday in the Salaheddin provincial city of Tarmiya.

The bomber, carrying a Saudi Arabian identification card, attacked a checkpoint guarded by police and members of the Sons of Iraq, the American-backed citizens' group that opposes al Qaeda in Iraq, police in Tikrit said.

Police said the Saudi ID card contained the name of Sultan bin-Mohammed al-Ghamedih, 35.

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This story tells a lot about the depravity of the enemy, but also how desperate his situation has become. Remember how bin Laden used to brag about having an unlimited number of young men willing to explode for Allah? Now his organization is in the position of creating "involuntary martyrs" to carry out their evil objectives.

In the history of warfare, it is hard to recall a group more depraved than al Qaeda. Has any anti war group in the US ever protested against this depravity, or do they all just blame it on Bush. If it is the latter, they are almost as sick as the al Qaeda operatives involved in this plot.