Outrage over image of Australian boy with Syrian soldier’s severed head
Australian man who fled to Syria with children taunts authorities with photographs of conflict
A shocking image of what is believed to be the seven-year-old son of an Australian man holding a decapitated head in Syria shows how barbaric the Islamic State "terrorist army" is, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said yesterday.
The picture, taken in the northern Syrian city of Raqa, was posted on the Twitter account of Khaled Sharrouf, an Australian man who fled to Syria last year and was now an Islamic State fighter, The Australian newspaper said.
It shows a boy struggling to hold up the severed head of a slain Syrian soldier by his hair.
It was captioned with the words "That's my boy", an apparent reference to one of Sharrouf's Sydney-raised sons.
Another photo published by the newspaper shows Sharrouf dressed in camouflage fatigues posing with three boys. Security agencies believe they are his children. All are holding guns and stand in front of the flag of the Islamic State militants that have seized swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria.
Abbott, speaking to ABC radio from the Netherlands, said the pictures showed the barbaric nature of the Sunni extremists formerly known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.