Spraying bullets from an AK-47, the four-year-old Al Qaeda fighter in Syria who should be in infants’ school

• Video shows youngster opening fire twice to shouts of 'Allahu Akbar'
  
• He is so small the gun barrel was supported by a section of road block
  
• Alarming footage was released by a jihadist group fighting Syrian civil war
• Other images show children aged nine to 15 training in black ski masks
  
• UN peace talks collapsed last night and Assad government may not return
  

By STEPHEN WRIGHT

PUBLISHED: 22:18 GMT, 31 January 2014 | UPDATED: 22:18 GMT, 31 January 2014

He is barely old enough to go to infant school, let alone fight in a savage civil war.

Yet this youngster, believed to be just four years old, is one of the latest ‘cub jihadists’ recruited for bloody battle in Syria.

He can be seen firing rounds from an automatic assault rifle in a shocking video that has emerged from the war-torn country.

ounter-terrorism officials say it is further evidence of how jihadists are grooming children to become fighters, as  Al Qaeda factions strive to establish a Taliban-like Islamic state in Syria.

The disturbing footage was posted on YouTube and is believed to be that of a son of a jihadist from Albania who is one of thousands of foreigners fighting with Al Qaeda in Syria.

The youngster, who wears a black ski mask, can be seen firing shots from a black AK-47-style automatic assault rifle with a folding stock.

He is so small that the barrel of the gun has to be supported by a section of road block so that he can cope with its weight.

The child opens fire to shouts of Allahu Akbar – Arabic for ‘God is Greater’ – before an arm reaches down and retrieves the weapon.

The video emerged as French President Francois Hollande yesterday claimed as many as 700 Britons are among extremists fighting in the Syrian civil war.

Speaking at a press conference after talks with David Cameron, the president said: ‘We have young people who live in our respective countries who are being manipulated, and they are going off to the combat areas.

‘Today we were exchanging figures – 600 to 700 young people are involved in each of our countries.’

That is almost double the most recent estimate by experts and comes amid ‘huge concern’ from security chiefs that the young jihadists will target Britain when they return from fighting in Syria.

The video of the four-year-old first emerged on January 21 on a YouTube channel operated by a jihadist who claimed to be based in northern Syria. It was entitled in Arabic: ‘A message from one of the cubs of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.’

FULL STORY: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2549768/The-4-year-old-Al-Q...