WARNING: Graphic content

FOR children half a world away, the nightmares don’t stop.

Five-year-old Shadi and his older sister and brother are among thousands of children who have seen more terrors than most of us combined in their short lifetime; children sold as sexual slaves, suicide bombings, blood, guts and gore, forced torture and mutilation.

But most of all, they’ve stared death in the eye.

“Deflowered slave for sale, age 13,” one ad in an online jihadi marketplace reads. “Body: slim, tall. Price: $9,000.”

For the children of Islamic State-controlled territories in Iraq and Syria, this is their reality. Their nightmare. Every. Single. Day.

“One day Shadi held a knife to our little sister’s throat,” Shadi’s older sister, Hadya, explains in a confronting episode of Dateline, which airs tonight.

“He would have cut her ear off if my mother hadn’t stopped him. He said, “I’ll cut her throat, she’s mine”.

These young siblings were forced to torture an adult while living as I.S. captives. Tonight on #DatelineSBS.



WARNING: Disturbing content pic.twitter.com/xMiWQFM5sQ — SBS Dateline (@DatelineSBS) July 11, 2017

The battle to retake the Iraqi city of Mosul has not come without a price, even in recent days Iraqi commanders said gains slowed to a crawl as IS fighters used families — including women and children — as human shields.

“IS sends children at our troops to blow themselves up in suicide bombings,” one Iraqi soldier said. The soldier said he believed most were aged between 10 and 15.

“It’s a disaster for children,” a schoolteacher who fled Mosul says. “Children are mentally impregnated with this ideology.”

Maths lessons in Mosul - the shocking legacy of I.S. indoctrination and abuse of kids, tonight on #DatelineSBS | https://t.co/SAqk2itqp2 pic.twitter.com/5VL8krn5ek — Amos Roberts (@amosroberts) July 11, 2017

But as the light begins to shine into the darkness of a battered city, it shines on some of the worst affected — they just might not know it yet.

“Another time he almost set fire to the tent,” Shadi’s sister explains.

“My little sister was asleep and smoke was coming out.

“He said we had to burn the place down, ‘like IS said’”.

Iraq’s prime minister declared “total victory” over the Islamic State group in Mosul after retaking full control of the country’s second-largest city three years after it was seized by extremists bent on building a global caliphate.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi alluded to the brutality of the battle for Mosul — Iraq’s longest yet in the fight against IS — saying the triumph had been achieved “by the blood of our martyrs.” Mosul fell to IS in a matter of days in 2014 but the campaign to retake it lasted nearly nine months. The fight, backed by US-led coalition air strikes, brought an end the extremists’ so-called caliphate, but has also left thousands dead, entire neighbourhoods in ruins and nearly 900,000 people displaced.

Hadya, 11, and her brothers Fadi, 9, and Shadi, 5, are among those displaced persons. The siblings were captives of the terror group for two years. Among their horror stories was when Islamic State militants forced the three to dismember a captive prisoner.

“He came along and said, ‘you cut off a foot, you cut off an arm, and you slash his face with a knife’,” Hadya explained.

“[He said] ‘otherwise I’ll take you away from your mother and kill you all’.”

“We were scared to refuse, we were each given a machete. I had to cut his hand off. I did it.

“He [Fadi] had to cut his feet off. Shadi had to cut his face with a knife.”

According to the children, the man died “when Shadi stabbed him in the eye”.

A shocking look at the I.S. caliphate and its indoctrination and abuse of young children.



This week on #DatelineSBS https://t.co/vvIYJHNDFW pic.twitter.com/LOG8vZFwB4 — SBS Dateline (@DatelineSBS) July 9, 2017

The United Nations said on Monday there was no end in sight to the humanitarian crisis in Iraq despite the conclusion of the fighting. Of the more than 897,000 people displaced from Mosul, the UN said thousands of residents will probably not be able to return to the city because of “extensive damage caused during the conflict.”

“We were woken up at 4am,” a former child soldier, 12-year-old Ayad, revealed.

“We had to wash and pray. After prayers, we had circles to read the Koran and then came training. We were taught to plant explosives.

“It was introductory training. They said that with bombs, your first mistake would be your last. They’d beat us with electric cable if we didn’t learn our lessons. They fired close to our feet to make us run faster.”

“It will be impossible to forget what has happened to me,” Ayad says. They’ve done a lot of damage to me and to society as a whole.”

“Future generations won’t forget this disaster, these massacres.”

- Additional reporting by Reuters

— Watch the full Dateline program I.S. KIDS via SBS On Demand.