IS youngest fighter, now a martyr

Group boasts a 10-year-old has been killed as he went into battle with his father in Syria

• Islamic State sympathisers share images of 10-year-old 'martyr' on Twitter
• Claim he was recently killed fighting alongside his militant father in Syria
• Reports of death identify the boy by alleged nom de guerre Abu Ubaidah
• Images show him wearing military clothing and posing with assault rifles

London: Islamic State militants and sympathisers are triumphantly circulating images of a 10-year-old boy they claim has been 'martyred' while fighting alongside his father in Syria.

Describing the child as IS' youngest jihadist, chilling photographs taken before his alleged death show him smiling at the camera, wearing military fatigues and brandishing a huge assault rifle.

IS sympathisers took to social media to identify the 'cub fighter' by his alleged nom de guerre Abu Ubaidah, adding that both he and his father were killed during clashes in Syria in recent weeks, but not specifying exactly where they died or who they had been fighting against.

Several images, which have not been independently verified, emerged on social media this week after a video reporting the deaths of the boy and his father was uploaded to YouTube in September.

The original video - distributed by the pro-Isis media group Al-A'amaq - is understood to have since been removed, but a number of photographs of the boy have since been widely shared by ISIS militants and their sympathisers on social media.

One image shows the boy standing inside a house, grinning as he struggles to hold an assault rifle so large that it threatens to topple him over.

Another picture shows him smiling sweetly while wearing an ammunition vest as he stands next to a van that has been converted into an armoured vehicle with a large plank of wood and bull bars.

Other images show him posing with a man understood to be his father, who militants named as 'Baghdadi'. In those images the boy identified as Abu Ubaidah is seen calmly holding another large rifle while surrounded by bearded men wearing military clothing. Last week a 24-year-old Muslim convert admitted taking her infant son to live among Islamic State terrorists in the Syrian city of Raqqa because she believes he will lead a 'better life' under their brutal regime.
Asiya Ummi Abdullah denied that children are unhappy living under the oppressive rule of ISIS' religious fanatics and explained that she felt her three-year-old son's spiritual well-being was better served in the group's de facto capital, where public crucifixions and beheadings are commonplace.

Ummi Abduallah - who had lived in Turkey since her teens but was born in Kyrgyzstan - said moving to the militant stronghold in Syria was in part to shield the young boy from the sex, crime, drugs and alcohol she sees as rampant in her home town Istanbul.

'Who says children here are unhappy?... He will know God and live under his rules,' she said.