SYDNEY (Reuters) - The photograph of a young boy holding the decapitated head of a slain Syrian soldier and published in Australian media on Monday underscored the barbarity of Islamist State militants, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said.
The image was posted on Twitter
and showed the boy, believed to be the son of Sydney jihadist Khaled
Sharrouf, The Australian newspaper said, adding that the boy was aged 7.
The image was taken in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa and was posted
last week on the Twitter account of Sharrouf, Australia's most wanted
terrorist who fled to Syria last year and is now an Islamist State
fighter.
Abbott said the photograph was "more evidence of just how barbaric this entity is".
The photo was "pretty graphic evidence of the real threat that ISIL
represents", said U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, in Sydney ahead of
annual Australia-United States Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN).
The Australian government believes at least 150 of its citizens are
involved in fighting or actively supporting the Islamic State (ISIL) in
Syria and Iraq.
It said last month it was putting Islamic State on its list of banned terrorist organizations.
The United States is exploring options to evacuate thousands of Iraqi
civilians trapped by Islamic militants on a barren mountain in northern
Iraq, after four nights of humanitarian relief airdrops, U.S. officials
said on Sunday.
While the
airdrops appear to have provided urgently needed aid, the harsh
conditions of the Sinjar mountain range in mid-summer have taken scores
of lives among Iraq's Yazidi minority, who are threatened by hardline
militants from the Islamic State.
Australia, along with France and Britain, has offered assistance to provide aid to the trapped people.
(Reporting by Jane Wardell; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)
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