![]() ![]() Witnesses told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed that tribal leaders encouraged children aged under 18 to take part in counter-insurgency operations, particularly those with family members already in the force. In a report published in May last year, Al-Araby Al-Jadeed, the Arabic-language sister publication to The New Arab, revealed similar findings. The Egyptian government failed to prevent its allied militias from recruiting and using children under 18 in hostilities against the group," it added. ![]() "The 'Wilayat Sina' group chased these children and brutally killed them later. "The armed forces assigned some enlisted children aged 15 - 18 with tasks such as spying or delivering food supplies, which exposed them to ," the report claimed. "In one case, we managed to geolocate a school used as a military outpost housed a child soldier recruited within a tribal militia, based on open-source satellite imagery… published by personal accounts of members of pro-government militias, official accounts of these militias or accounts attributed to 'Wilayat Sina'," the report read. ![]() The Egyptian government conducted several counter-insurgency operations in the restive province but has been routinely accused of violating the rights of residents. When I learned, I wanted to participate, so I quit school," a child fighter told the group under a pseudonym. ![]() In the beginning, I was afraid, I was only 17, but my uncle and an officer trained me in fire arming for almost two months. The group explained that the report is based on in-depth interviews with 15 relatives of children recruited by the Egyptian armed forces or pro-government militias as well as open-source social media platforms. On Tuesday, Sinai Foundation for Human Rights (SFHR), an Egyptian group based in the UK, released a controversial report documenting several cases of children who either were injured or lost their lives while reportedly fighting alongside armed forces or pro-government militias, violating international laws ratified by the North African country. A human rights organisation accused Egypt of committing "acts amounting to war crimes" by allegedly recruiting child fighters for its ongoing armed conflict against an armed insurgency in the restive North Sinai province. ![]()
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