Images are IS stills from video and some posted on Twitter by Raqqa is being Slaughtered Silently

Islamic State, Wilayat Al-Khayr is purported to have released a new 18 minute video “Sometimes with his own blood” which features young children in camouflage outfits and black uniforms appearing to carry out executions of 3 alleged Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê (PKK) fighters. Minors have appeared on IS videos before and are referred to as Caliphate Cubs.

One boy is interviewed and children, all boys, are seen going through a series of exercises and beside an IS flag before the video moves to individual acts of killing. The 3 men to be executed are also seen being interviewed discussing their actions.

The scene moves to a playground area where a boys climbs steps to one of the abandoned fairground rides in Deir ez-Zor, Syria and approaches a man ziptied to metal poles on the exterior wall of a revolving ride. The child is presented with a knife and proceeds to cover the eyes of his victim with his left hand and on receiving a signal from his instructor saws through the throat of his victim then wipes the knife on his white T shirt. The video then moves to dripping blood on the carousel and a decapitated head on the base of the ride.

The video moves to show an area of fairground by a railway track, a ferris wheel can be seen. Another very young child appears in a play area filled with broken coloured balls where another man is tied. He holds a gun and is seen focusing on getting his target into shot. An adult is seen in the background. The child appears to fire several times bullets hitting the man who is covered in blood and shouts “Allahu Akbar” twice.

An older child is viewed in the final execution and talks to camera brandishing a knife. Then the last victim is seen with hands tied behind his back by a railway track. He is on his knees and kicked to the ground. All 3 children are present. The small child dressed in black draws his hand across his own throat to signal he is to have his throat cut. The man’s throat is slashed and a knife then stuck in his back. The last shot is of a camera filming the scene.

Carol Anne Grayson is an independent writer/researcher on global health/human rights and is Executive Producer of the Oscar nominated, Incident in New Baghdad . She is a Registered Mental Nurse with a Masters in Gender Culture and Development. Carol was awarded the ESRC, Michael Young Prize for Research 2009, and the COTT ‘Action = Life’ Human Rights Award’ for “upholding truth and justice”. She is also a survivor of US “collateral damage”.