Mosul - When the boys first arrived at the Islamic State training facility in eastern Mosul they would cry and ask about their parents, who went missing when the militants rampaged through northern Iraq in 2014.
But as the weeks passed they appeared to absorb the group’s ultra-hardline ideology, according to a worker at the former orphanage where they were housed.
The children, aged from 3 to 16 and mostly Shi’a Muslims or minority Yazidis, began referring to their own families as apostates after they were schooled in Sunni Islam by the militant fighters, he said.
The boys were separated from the girls and infants, undergoing indoctrination and training to become “cubs of the caliphate” - a network of child informers and fighters used by the jihadists to support their military operations.
The complex in Mosul’s Zuhur district, which had been home to local orphans until they were kicked out by the IS, was one of several sites the jihadists used across the city.
It is now shuttered, its doors sealed with padlocks by Iraqi security forces.
The IS withdrew before Iraqi forces launched a US-backed offensive in October to retake the city, but last month there were still reminders of the group’s attempt to brainwash dozens of children.
A saying attributed to the Prophet Mohammed was painted in black on one wall, urging children to learn to swim, shoot and ride horses. Inside the building was a swimming pool, dry and full of rubbish.
Arithmetic problems in a fourth grade maths book used imagery of warfare, while the cover bore a rifle made up of equations. History books focus exclusively on the early years of Islam and emphasise martial events.
The orphanage worker, who was cowed into staying on after the militants took over in 2014, said girls who were brought to the centre were often married off to the group’s commanders.
The man asked not to be named for fear of reprisals by the IS.