In the Islamic State boot camps, children are not only trained in using deadly weapons; the terrorist group is also forcing the young ones to watch gruesome beheadings and executions in an attempt to make them insensitive towards such practices.
A 13-year-old boy, who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity, explained to the news outlet the life inside these training camps.
"My friends and I were studying at the mosque, and they taught us that we should enroll in jihad with the (Islamic State)," said the child, identified in the report as Mohammed. "But my father did not allow me to."
Reports of ISIS training camps, which recruit children as young as four, had emerged around a year back, after it released a shocking footage, showing a four-year-old boy in balaclava firing an AK-47.
In another footage released by Islamic State, a boy is seen expertly assembling an assault rifle, while other children state their desire to be martyrs for Islam.
And it was this life that Mohammed was being forced into and his father wanted him to avoid.
But one day the ISIS fighters showed up at the family's house, the child's father said.
The militants learned that Mohammed's father had forbidden his son from attending the ISIS training camp. "They said 'if you prevent Mohammed from coming to the camp, we will cut off your head'," his father recounted.
So the father had to sent Mohammed to the camp.
The camp was a terror training school in the strictest sense. The children in these camps were made to jog everyday, asked to read the Koran and were trained in using weapons, including Kalashnikovs.
But besides this, the children were also made to attend executions and stonings.
"We saw a young man who did not fast for Ramadan, so they crucified him for three days, and we saw a woman being stoned because she committed adultery," the boy told the news network.
The ISIS also forced children to watch people get their heads cut off, the 13-year-old revealed.
Mohammed's father often worried that the militants might turn his son into a suicide bomber.
"He is only a child, they might make him a suicide bomber and (convince him) that he will be in paradise and stuff like that," the father pointed out.
Mohammed's father stressed that the children did not truly understand what they were doing in these camps. "They thought war and guns were entertainment."
Finally, Mohammed's father was able to persuade the ISIS camp leaders to send his son home for a few days. And as soon as they got him, the family fled to Turkey.
