The members of the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in Syria forced children as young as 14 to watch videos of beheadings and beat them with cables during six months of captivity, Human Rights Watch said on Tuesday.
The terrorists abducted a group of children on May 29 as they returned to the Syrian town of Kobani after taking school exams in the city of Aleppo. It freed the final 25 hostages on Oct. 29, according to Reuters.
ISIL has captured swathes of Iraq and Syria. Kobani, a predominantly Kurdish town on the Syrian border with Turkey, has been besieged by ISIL terrorists for more than a month despite US-led airstrikes meant to displace them.
The abuse of more than 150 children, some held as long as six months, amounted to war crimes, Human Rights Watch said, citing testimony from interviews with four boys among the group.
The children described being forced to watch videos of ISIL in combat and beheading captives, the New York-based group said.
“Those who didn’t conform to the program were beaten. They beat us with a green hose or a thick cable with wire running through it. They also beat the soles of our feet,” it quoted one boy as saying.
“They sometimes found excuses to beat us for no reason.”
The boys said they were given no reason for their release. The last children to be let go were now seeking shelter in Turkey, the rights group said.
Those from families with members fighting with the Kurdish forces, called YPG, which has been defending Kobani, were singled out for abuse, the children said.
Their captors, who came from Syria, Jordan, Libya, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia, “told them to give them the addresses of their families, cousins, uncles, saying, ‘When we go to Kobani, we will get them and cut them up.’ They saw the YPG as infidels,” one 15-year-old boy told Human Rights Watch.
Other Kurdish children and adults are still in captivity, the rights group said. ISIL is also thought to hold less than 10 Western hostages, including foreign journalists.
The United States and its allies have pounded ISIL targets in Iraq and Syria since August, stepping up the bombardment after the terrorists moved in on Kobani in October.
 

Palestinian officials have condemned the Tel Aviv regime over its plan for the construction of more settler units in East al-Quds.
Speaking to reporters in a news conference in the occupied West Bank city of Ramallah on Monday, Deputy-Secretary of the Fatah Central Committee Jibril Rajoub stated that the plan would further inflame tensions in East al-Quds, Press TV reported.
“Such unilateral acts will lead to an explosion,” he said.
Nabil Abu Rudeina, a spokesman for the Palestinian national unity government, also denounced the measure as a “dangerous escalation” with the potential to create an “earthquake” in the region.
Meanwhile, chief Palestinian Authority negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said Israel’s move to construct over 1,000 illegal settler units in East al-Quds strengthens the Palestinian leadership’s resolve to speed up efforts to approach the UN Security Council and to join the International Criminal Court.
“Everything (Benjamin) Netanyahu is doing are war crimes, which must be tried according to international law,” Erekat added, calling on Washington to “rethink its biased position” toward Tel Aviv.
Earlier on Monday, the Israeli cabinet approved plans for the construction of 1,060 new settler units in East al-Quds amid mounting criticism of the expansionist policies of the Tel Aviv regime.
More than half a million Israelis live in more than 120 settlements built since Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories of the West Bank including East al-Quds in 1967. Much of the international community considers the Israeli settlements illegal.
 

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Numerous Democratic officeholders declined to invite the president to campaign for them and often cited instances where they disagreed with him, such as on health care or energy issues.
The accuracy of pre-election US political surveys has often been erratic, with some polling turning out to be way off the mark. Even as several Senate races are deemed too close to call, analysts say Republicans have about a 70 percent chance of picking up at least six seats to control the Senate.
If Republicans do control Congress, it could presage new disputes with Obama over his signature legislative achievement, massive national health care reforms that have allowed millions of people to secure insurance coverage they could not previously afford. Many Republicans view it as excessive government involvement in peoples’ health care and call for repeal of the law.
Many Republicans also attacked Obama’s handling of the current Ebola crisis, called for approval of an oil pipeline from Canada through the central US and a curb on government regulation of businesses.
Some opposition lawmakers have also disputed the president’s handling of Russia’s intervention in Ukraine and US airstrikes against terrorists in Iraq and Syria.
 

At least 20 people were killed in two attacks by US drones in central Yemen.