The wanted Maute family. Credit:Cebu Police Instead, he was allegedly given a rifle and brainwashed to kill government soldiers. He was taught that if he perished in battle, he would go to heaven. "I was ready to die," he said. The teenager, who remains anonymous, said some of his friends would now be fighting in the besieged city. His claims were backed up by a video obtained by Rappler, which shows young boys practising martial arts moves with masked men. Multiple witnesses fleeing the battle-torn city also testified to the presence of child soldiers.

A soldier scans a street for snipers in Marawi city. Credit:Getty Images Zia Alonto Adiong, an aid worker whose own ancestral Marawi home was destroyed in a military air strike last week, said he had seen 16 to 20 children flaunting heavy-duty guns in his neighbourhood. Terrorists had recruited them from unregulated religious schools operating outside the state education system, he claimed. A cloud of debris rises as Philippine Air Force fighter jets bomb suspected locations of Islamist militants in Marawi on June 9. Credit:AP "During the early days of the war, you would see nine to 11-year-olds manning checkpoints, holding heavy firearms. We're not talking only boys, there are several girls," he said.

"They are running errands, following orders from their commanders... checking all civilians moving out from this area. We presume that some of these children already died in air strikes." Philippine Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, centre, Philippine Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Jesus Dureza, left, and National Security Adviser General Hermogenes Esperon, right, checks out firearms seized from Muslim militants in Marawi. Credit:AP Maute was caught this month in a vehicle loaded with weapons, and is now facing charges of rebellion. So far 375 people, including 26 civilians, have died in Marawi, which was overrun on May 23 after a botched attempt to arrest Isnilon Hapilon, the leader of the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group, who was earlier named the Islamic State emir for Southeast Asia. Displaced residents stay at an evacuation centre outside Marawi as it's unclear how many people remain trapped in the city. Credit:AP

A senior military commander said on Saturday that Hapilon, who is one of America's most wanted terrorists, may have slipped out of the city in recent days. An eight-hour ceasefire allowing residents to celebrate the end of Ramadan came to an abrupt end yesterday afternoon as the government continued its offensive. Assaults backed by air and artillery bombardment had stopped at the start of Islamic prayers at 6am, but gunfire broke out as soon as the truce ended around 2pm, AFP reporters in Marawi said. Leslie Abad, left, the widow of First Lieutenant Raymond Abad of the Philippine marines, at his buria. Abad was one of 13 marines killed on June 9 in fighting between government forces and Muslim militants in Marawi. Credit:AP Lieutenant General Carlito Galvez, the regional military commander, said the truce also allowed five Muslim religious leaders to enter "ground zero" and negotiate with the militants to release civilian hostages, especially children, women and the elderly. About 300,000 civilians have been displaced so far, and up to 1000 may still be in the battle zone.

The assault was led by the Maute group - also affiliated to IS - whose decision to join forces with Abu Sayyaf, and ability to hold territory, has sparked fears that IS is using a power vacuum in the southern Philippines to set up a regional stronghold. A decision by Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to impose martial law on Marawi and the surrounding province of Mindanao has failed to break the siege or assuage the fears of neighbouring countries. Last week the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia began trilateral naval patrols to curb the expansion of local Islamist terror groups. Singapore has raised its terror threat level to the highest in recent years amid news that IS supporters have claimed the city state as part of its East Asian territory. In interviews with London's Telegraph, influential residents of the southern Philippines built up a picture of an isolated and neglected region, overrun by illicit criminal networks, rival clans and Muslim separatist groups. They said bad governance and poverty had driven recruits to join armed insurgents and opened up the way for extremists to take control.

Adiong, the aid worker, said the biggest fear was that foreign terrorists would arrive by sea to attack other cities in Mindanao. Foreigners from as far afield as Yemen and Chechnya, as well as from neighbouring countries, are believed to be fighting in Marawi. Hussein Datuharun, a city official, said foreign fighters had sneaked into the city months before the attack. "They rented houses in order to get a good advantage," he said. Weapons were easily obtained from the lawless badlands of Mindanao. The Maute brothers were educated in the Middle East, but it is uncertain when they morphed from scions of a wealthy family with alleged criminal connections into hardened Islamists. "We can all agree that these people had some kind of ideological leanings," said Joseph Franco, a counter-terrorism expert at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University. But he said that the current pattern of recruitment across Mindanao was more material-driven than based on ideology.

Loading Deprived youths signed up to the Maute and Abu Sayyaf groups, enticed by the lucrative nature of their kidnap-for-ransom crimes. "It's not about the afterlife, it's all about the here and now, how to transform that ransom money into a better life," he said. Telegraph, London