Al Qaeda's brutal new weapons: Children kidnapped and kept in chains to be taught how to become suicide bombers

Al Qaeda is kidnapping young children in troubled Somalia and brainwashing them to launch future attacks on the West, it has been claimed. The 'terrorist schools' keep the children - some as young as seven - chained up to beds while they were taught an extreme version of Islam. 

 The youths, all under 10-years-old, were also taught about suicide bombings and told they would go to paradise if they killed themselves in 'martyrdom-operations'. Pictures of the locked-up children were uncovered by terror investigator Neil Doyle after authorities carried out a raid on a school in Mogadishu. 

 The classes, being carried out at a Islamic Boarding School, were being taught by a member of the Al Qaeda inspired Somali terrorist group Al Shabaab.

The teacher claimed that the children were in chains because they missing classes. Most of the children's parents were unaware they were there. The raid was one of a number of operations sanctioned by the government in recent months and led to the arrest of 200 people. 

 Mr Doyle, author of Terror Base UK and Terror Tracker, told the Sunday Mirror: 'The images suggest Al Shabaab has turned to slavery in order to produce a generation of child soldiers and suicide bombers. 'The group has lost a lot of ground to government troops and it almost beggars belief that they have adopted widespread child abuse as a way of trying to engineer a comeback. 

 'They are following in the footsteps of other militants who target children, unfortunately, like the Afghan Taliban who regularly poison students at girls' schools and shoot teachers.' The latest revelation comes just days after Al Shabaab claimed responsibility for a remote-controlled bomb that k*lled at least eight Somali government troops when it hit their vehicle in Mogadishu.

 Government troops and African Union peacekeepers say they have tightened security before a presidential election on August 20 when the transitional government will be dissolved. A combined force including Kenyan, Burundian, Ethiopian and Djiboutian troops is planning an offensive on Kismayu, Somalia's second biggest city, and a hub for Al Shabaab, before then.