Just when we thought the Middle East could not descend into greater depths of horror and depravity, Islamic State has proved us wrong again.

For the terror group is now using an unprecedented number of children – dubbed 'Cubs of the Caliphate' – to launch devastating suicide attacks throughout the region and beyond.

Once they are recruited by IS, the children's isolation leaves them utterly under the control of military trainers, who school them in the fundamentals of the most fascistic interpretation of sharia law.

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THIS is the dramatic moment police stripped a suspected ISIS suicide bomber aged 12 or 13 of his explosive belt just before he could detonate it outside a Shia mosque in Kirkuk, northern Iraq, on Sunday evening – evidence of the terror group’s increasing reliance on child recruits.

We know from IS propaganda that even small children are indoctrinated – from the moment they are able to recite the Koran – into believing that the most honourable act they can perform is to die in the name of the self-declared IS leader, Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

In the training camps, these children are fed a constant diet of DVDs of jihadi operations against 'infidels', which cultivates a murderous hatred of everyone but extremist Sunni Muslims. They are forbidden access via the internet and satellite television to the outside world.

The images of the boy caught in Iraq are particularly harrowing because they reveal just how young and apparently scared he was.

No one with a soul wants to see a little boy blown to pieces, even if he has been brainwashed into believing what he is doing is right. And once stripped to the waist and disarmed, the child burst into tears and yelled hysterically for his mother.

The footage may suggest IS is sending children on suicide missions without the bombers knowing they are about to be 'matryred'.

This theory is supported by the suggestion that a child suspected of killing scores of innocents at a wedding in Turkey on Saturday night was blown up remotely by his manipulators, who used a mobile phone to detonate the explosives.

Caught: Police remove the boy’s explosive belt before he bursts into tears

The images of the boy caught in Iraq are particularly harrowing because they reveal just how young and apparently scared he was

The unsettling truth, though, is far more unpalatable. For there is no denying that these children know they are wearing an explosive vest and have been given clear instructions and training regarding who to target and how to cause as many casualties as possible.

One especially gruesome video produced by IS shows children who appear to be about 11 or 12 hunting down men described as 'spies' inside a cave, then shooting or beheading them. It is utterly barbarous. Other terror groups have used children as pawns in a bloody conflict.

The Arab militant organisation Hamas did so on several occasions, most infamously in 2004, when it sent a 16-year-old boy (whose brother later said he had the intelligence of a 12-year-old) wearing an explosive vest to an Israeli checkpoint.

The guards became suspicious and forced him to submit before he was taken into custody.

The death cult Islamic State, so careless of human life, was quick to learn that indoctrinated children are an effective way of causing havoc and fear.

Within months of the caliphate being founded, more than a thousand children under the age of 16 had been recruited.

We know from IS propaganda that even small children are indoctrinated – from the moment they are able to recite the Koran – into believing that the most honourable act they can perform is to die in the name of the self-declared IS leader, Caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (pictured)

Terrorism experts have documented how IS has managed to implement such a relentless recruitment operation by kidnapping vulnerable street children, or exploiting impoverished families by promising to pay them up to $350 per child per month for handing them over. A considerable sum in a war-torn village, this offer presents an unenviable choice for parents.

If all this were not bad enough, a new report by the respected Combating Terrorism Centre organisation states that IS is even more desperately filling its ranks with child soldiers as a result of suffering losses from Russian and US-led airstrikes.

'The data unambiguously suggests that the Islamic State's mobilisation of children and youth for military purposes is accelerating,' according to the report.

It goes on to warn of the dramatic rise in the rate of suicide attacks committed by children, explaining that there were three times as many suicide operations involving children and youths in January 2016 as in the previous January.

More than half of the children died in Iraq, while at least 30 per cent lost their lives during suicide attempts in Syria.

It might be all too easy to dismiss these atrocities as faraway problems in a benighted region. Yet the increasing use of child suicide bombers in Syria, Iraq and Turkey has potentially serious implications for the people of Europe and the UK.

There are suggestions that a child suspected of killing scores of innocents at a wedding in Turkey on Saturday night was blown up remotely by his manipulators, who used a mobile phone to detonate the explosive. Mourners are pictured at a funeral for some of the many victims

Our counter-intelligence forces – along with those in countries like France and Germany – are already struggling to combat what is rapidly threatening to turn into a full-scale Islamist insurgency. For instance, we have seen terrorists copying tactics used in Iraq – such as employing trucks as weapons, as happened in Nice recently – to carry out horrendous attacks in Europe.

Given that a four-year-old British child dubbed 'Jihadi Junior' has appeared in an IS video championing jihad and threatening to murder 'infidels', it is by no means beyond the realm of possibility that the children of radical Islamists still at home in Britain, or the many hundreds who have returned from Syria, may be similarly exploited here as well.

Last week, the Mail reported how the convicted British hate preacher Anjem Choudary had radicalised a five-year-old boy who shouted 'shame' whenever he saw a woman in a dress who was not entirely covered up. And that boy was not alone.

Which surely adds a chilling new dimension to an already frightening situation.