Hamas allegedly training young child soldiers for battle

Images and body-cam footage, shared by Israeli Telegram channel South First Responders (SFR), show school-aged boys holding guns and dressed in uniforms, reportedly taking part in “military-style training camps”.

SFR said the footage is “evidence of cynical indoctrination of Palestinian children in what appear to be some sort of military-style training camps”.

“Footage from these GoPros and other cameras show how Hamas and other terror groups prepared and motivated their forces to carry out massacres against civilians.”

The footage was reportedly captured on body-worn cameras taken from dead militants and shared on Telegram last week, though it’s important to note reports from both Hamas and Israel have proven to be unreliable at times.

In one image, a group of boys, who appear to be of varying ages, are seen sitting on the ground wearing vests and armed with guns while a number of adults dressed in black stand before them.

In another image, a young boy in a camouflage uniform holds a gun in two hands, as a man appearing to adjust a head covering stands behind.

SFR also released footage of Hamas killing civilians, with one video showing gunmen going door-to-door searching for people inside, according to the Daily Mail.

Holly Cullen, an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Western Australia, told news.com.au she was “not surprised” by claims Hamas are allegedly training children.

“The participation of children in the Intifada [a Palestinian uprising], mostly in very low level things like throwing stones, has been a long standing feature of the resistance to Israeli occupation. So it’s not surprising that some armed groups will go further.”

In 2004, Amnesty International called on Palestinian armed groups, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and al-Aqsa Martyrs’s brigades, to “put an immediate end to the use or involvement of any kind of children in armed activity” following reports a 16-year-old Palestinian child was carrying explosives when attempting to pass through an Israeli army checkpoint.

“Using children to carry out or assist in armed attacks of any kind is an abomination. We call on the Palestinian leadership to publicly denounce these practices,” it said in a statement at the time.

The recruitment and use of children under the age of 15 as soldiers is prohibited under international humanitarian law and defined as a war crime by the International Criminal Court.

Professor Cullen said while children can be forcibly recruited to take up arms, “often children living in places like Palestine, that are in active armed conflict, willingly associate themselves with armed groups”.

“Therefore armed groups will take advantage of that and train them and use them.”

She predicted children who have been allegedly recruited by Hamas militants – a group which has been reported to have beheaded babies and committed other atrocities – would be exposed to obscene horrors.

“Given the level of armed conflict going on, even if they’re civilians, they’re seeing quite a lot of terrible, terrible things. There was a hospital bombed [on Tuesday], so even civilian children are seeing some quite horrible things.

“But any child who is involved in armed conflict is seeing whatever their group is doing.”

Child soldiers around the world

Children have been used as soldiers in more than a dozen countries around the world, including in Uganda where the Lord’s Resistance Army, led by Joseph Kony, abducted and deployed 35,000 children.

Between 2005 and 2022 alone, over 105,000 children have been recruited and used by parties to conflict, according to UNICEF.

As well as combat, Professor Cullen said child recruits, some as young as 10, are used for a number of other purposes, including as cooks, spies, guards and to carry messages between camps.

“Sometimes children are able to move more freely between military camps and the civilian population and back. Children may also be more likely to follow orders unquestioningly, and they are often more cooperative, and less likely to question what’s going on.”

Once a conflict is over, Professor Cook said there’s a “big effort” by international bodies such as UNICEF to demobilise child soldiers.

“They try to reunite them with their families and communities. But then there’s the bigger question of how to give them some kind of rehabilitation.”

Even after conflict, children can be left to bear the emotional and psychological burden that comes with witnessing and potentially participating in atrocities.

“Children also more vulnerable are more likely to experience forms of post traumatic stress than adults,” said Professor Cullen.

“There’s also forms of sexual abuse that happens for both boys and girls … in some African conflicts, there were instances where girls in particular were being assigned as brides to military leaders in armed groups.”

Last week, the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court reaffirmed the ICC had been investigating “the situation in the State of Palestine” for alleged war crimes committed since June 2014.

“This mandate is ongoing and applies to crimes committed in the current context,” the prosecutors said.

However, whether the ICC’s probe will include the recruitment or use of child soldiers “depends on the evidence they’re able to compile,” said Professor Cullen.

“There are a range of possible crimes against humanity going on at the moment on both sides, and therefore, inevitably, a prosecution has to make choices about what are the most important crimes to prosecute – what are the crimes that they have the best evidence for.”

More than 1400 people have been killed in Israel following Hamas’ surprise attack on October 7.

In the Gaza Strip, about 3000 people have been killed and 12,500 wounded, according to the Health Ministry in Gaza.