Nineveh (IraqiNews.com) Guided by Islamic State militants, a six-year-old girl carried out a suicide bombing on Wednesday, targeting refugees in Nineveh’s eastern region, a local source said.

No casualties resulted from the attack that targeted a convoy of refugees heading towards a location held by Iraqi security forces, the source told Alsumaria News.

The girl, the source explained, belongs to a minor girls squad run by IS. “The group has started to rely on its fourth generation,” he said, noting that those are drafted within squads yet unfamiliar to Iraqi security authorities

Since it took over large areas of Iraq in 2014 to establish its so-called “Islamic Caliphate”, IS has been notorious for training, and sometimes deploying, underage fighters for its battles with Iraqi forces. Suicide bombings and booby traps have proven effective in slowing down the advancement of Iraqi troops towards the center of Mosul.

A major campaign carried out since October by Iraqi government troops, backed by US-led air forces and popular militias, seeks to retake Nineveh’s city of Mosul and deal a fatal blow to IS’s existence in Iraq. Battles since then have forced at least 120.000 people to leave homes to refugee camps in Nineveh and neighboring provinces.





