Al-Qaeda has been kidnapping children in Somalia and brainwashing them to launch future attacks on the West, the Daily Mail reported.

The “terrorist schools” reportedly chain children, as young as seven-years-old, to beds while they are taught an extreme version of Islam.

The children, all of whom are under ten years of age, were also taught about suicide bombings and told they would go to paradise if they perpetrated “martyrdom operations,” according to the newspaper.

Terror investigator Neil Doyle uncovered pictures of locked-up children after authorities carried out a raid on a school in Mogadishu. The classes are being taught by a member of the terrorist group al-Shabaab, a cell inspired by al-Qaeda.

The teacher claimed that the children were being chained because they were missing classes. Most of the parents were presumably unaware of the conditions at the “school.”

“The images suggest al-Shabaab has turned to slavery in order to produce a generation of child soldiers and suicide bombers.” Doyle told the Sunday Mirror. “The group has lost a lot of ground to government troops and it almost beggars belief that they have adopted widespread child abuse as a way of trying to engineer a comeback,” he added.

Doyle went on to say, “They are following in the footsteps of other militants who target children, unfortunately, like the Afghan Taliban who regularly poison students at girls’ schools and shoot teachers.” 

Terrorist group al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for a remote-controlled bomb that killed at least 8 Somali government troops, just days before reports of the ‘terrorist school’ had emerged.