The focus of the teenage recruitment has been in northern Iraq. The
military said at least five teenagers Ñ ages from 14 to 19 Ñ were employed
in grenade and suicide attacks in May and June 2009.
Officials said Al Qaida has long used women and children to penetrate
U.S. and Iraqi security cordons. But they said the renewed deployment of
teenagers was meant to prevent the capture of AQI agents, particularly in
the Kirkuk area.
On June 4, a teenage boy was seen throwing a grenade at a combined
patrol of Iraqi police and U.S. soldiers in Hawijah, 30 kilometers outside
Kirkuk. The military said the grenade failed to detonate, and the boy fled.
"The incident is part of a growing trend of children carrying out
attacks on Iraqi security and U.S. forces in the province," the military
said in a statement on June 6.
The trend was reported in wake of the arrest at least one 15-year-old
after he was alleged to have thrown a grenade toward a U.S.-Iraqi patrol in
Hawijah. The teenage boy was also said to have thrown a grenade at another
joint patrol on May 26. In both cases, nobody was injured.
Al Qaida was also believed to have used teenagers to drive suicide
bombs. In Kirkuk, officials said, a 14-year-old drove a car in a suicide
bombing that killed five Iraqi police officers on May 12.
On May 1, a 19-year-old would-be suicide bomber was detained by Iraqi
police as he sought to detonate his suicide vest in a Shi'ite mosque. The
teenager was said to have been a three-year Al Qaida veteran.
The Iraq Army has already arrested an Al Qaida recruitment cell that
focused on youngsters. Officials said four Al Qaida agents were detained
on April 14 in Kirkuk on charges of recruiting and training teenagers for
suicide missions.