As ISIS weakens, the terror group has for the first time used a child of U.S. origin as a mouthpiece.
The boy, Yousef, whom the video says is 10 years old, spoke a message given to him by adults seeming to admit the group is losing its grip on Syria and Iraq but also warning President Donald Trump by name that further terror attacks would come to the U.S., CBS News reported.
The video is part of a trend toward increasingly using children, the younger the better, to carry out attacks and otherwise represent ISIS, CBS reported. CBS said it noticed more children in videos and photos in recent months from battlefields it monitors in western Iraq.
The battle to recapture Raqqa has intensified since June with more civilian casualties reported as U.S. coalition air strikes continue, CBS reported. About 2,000 military remain entrenched in the middle of the city, and many families are with them.
It wasn’t confirmed the video was actually shot in Raqqa or that the boy came to Syria two years ago with his mother from America and that his father was a U.S. military member, CBS reported.
The child seems to have an American accent and to be reading from a script in parts of the video, NBC News reported.
“Any child used in that capacity in an ISIS video regardless of what is being done is sick. It is sick and depraved, and we have seen that time and time again from ISIS,” State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said of the video, NBC reported.
Twitter users reacted strongly to the child’s use in the video.
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