Qamishli, Syria: An Australian Islamic State recruit has described the hellish final days of the terror group in Syria, saying he saw children starve to death because jihadist fighters were taking all the food.

Mohammed Noor Masri, 26, the Sydney tradesman who has admitted spending four years as a member of IS before he surrendered with his young family to Kurdish soldiers, has described "blokes looking like cavemen", infested with ticks and lice, as the militants made their desperate final stand in the tiny village of Baghouz on the banks of the Euphrates River.

"I seen kids die actually, seen it with my eyes": Mohammed Noor Masri. Credit:Kate Geraghty

His own three-year-old son, Alae, would fall asleep clutching an empty date packet as a teddy bear in the hole covered by tarpaulin that Masri had set up to shelter his family.

Masri, who is in a Kurdish detention facility for captured IS members, wants to come home to face justice and has pleaded for his Sydney-born wife and their three children, who were all born in Syria, to also be brought to Australia.