Hezbollah has been recruiting child soldiers from their Imam al-Mahdi Scouts who are as young as 15, according to reports.
From what I can tell, they were killed in the vicinity of adult Hezbollah fighters, and were not targeted themselves.
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| Nazi salute at the Mahdi Scouts |
According to experts interviewed in Lebanese media, Hezbollah is suffering a manpower shortage. They have been recruiting from their scouts to backfill various functions.
It does not look like these are fighters, but they are being used as messengers, lookouts and couriers. Under international law, they are still combatants.
Since Hezbollah's communications system has been thoroughly compromised, messengers are necessary to communicate between different cells.
Hezbollah attracts the youth to the Scouts with promises of an (Iranian) salary as well as the promise of martyrdom that they children are brainwashed with in the scouts. Al Jazeera quoted one 14 year old in 2021 as saying, “Al-Mahdi Scouts told us to be martyrs defending our land from all the countries that attack us.
Training kids to want to die is, of course, child abuse. And Western media simply doesn't talk about it.
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