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The boys look about 11 or 12, some even younger. They wear balaclavas to hide their faces. They sport AK47 assault rifles that dwarf their small frames, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, pistols and in one case a suicide belt.

The three-minute film shows the children — perhaps 20 in all — being taught to kidnap and assassinate at what appears to be an al-Qaeda training and indoctrination camp in the Iraqi countryside.

In a series of exercises they stop a man on a bike, pin his hands behind his head and hold a gun to the base of his skull. They pull a driver from a car and detain him at gunpoint. They jump from a minibus with weapons in their hands.

Guided by adult trainers, they storm a house and capture the people sleeping on a floor inside. They brandish their weapons for the cameraman, recite Koranic verses and chant their support for al-Qaeda.

The US military released the chilling footage in Baghdad yesterday, saying it was seized during a raid on December 4 on a suspected al-Qaeda base in Khan Bani Saad, north of Baghdad. Rear-Admiral Gregory Smith, a military spokesman, described it as a propaganda tool that would have been used to recruit more children.

The Iraqi army simultaneously released footage of its forces raiding a house in the Kirkuk area last week to rescue an 11-year-old boy allegedly kidnapped by al-Qaeda. It said the kidnappers had threatened to behead the boy if his parents did not pay a $100,000 (£50,000) ransom.

There is no way of verifying the authenticity of either film and the US and Iraqi military both have a vested interest in portraying al-Qaeda in the worst possible light.

Admiral Smith and Major-General Mohammed al-Askari, an Iraqi army spokesman, said they were releasing the videos to highlight al-Qaeda’s growing use of woman and children and deepening depravity.

They were clearly seeking to build on the widespread disgust inspired by the terrorist group’s use of two mentally disablen women last Friday to attack two crowded pet markets in Baghdad, killing about 100 people. The explosives attached to the women were detonated remotely and they may not even have known what they were doing. They were also teenagers, the military said yesterday.

Admiral Smith produced figures to show al-Qaeda’s increasing use of women as suicide bombers in Iraq. He said that five had carried out suicide attacks before 2007 and ten since, with four of those this year alone.

He had no figures for child suicide bombers but at least two 15-year-old boys blew themselves up last month. One detonated his explosives at a funeral ceremony near Tikrit, killing 17 mourners. The second caused an explosion at a school in the northern city of Mosul. A third 15-year-old suicide bomber, the son of a senior al-Qaeda member, reportedly walked into a gathering of tribal elders near Fallujah carrying a box of sweets. He killed six people.

Before last month there had been few other known cases of child suicide bombers in Iraq.

Admiral Smith also claimed that on December 8 US forces in Muqdadiyah found a synopsis of a planned training film which would have shown children interrogating and executing victims, planting improvised explosive devices and conducting sniper attacks.

“Al-Qaeda in Iraq wants to poison the next generation of Iraqis,” he said. “It is offering children as the new generation of mujahedeen . . . It’s a morally broke ideology that Iraqis have rejected and are fighting against to reclaim their homeland.”

General al-Askari said the growing use of women and children was a sign of desperation by al-Qaeda.

Women and children have obvious attractions for terrorists because they are less likely to be searched or attract suspicion. Al-Qaeda has been taken aback in the past few months, however, as thousands of ordinary Sunnis have turned on the terrorists and driven them out of large areas of western Iraq and Baghdad.

American and Iraqi forces recently launched Operation Phantom Phoenix against al-Qaeda strongholds in Diyala province and other parts of central and northern Iraq.

The US military claimed yesterday that 35 senior al-Qaeda terrorists were killed or captured in January, including four named emirs who directed operations.

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