ISIS have found a new way of showcasing their troops’ ‘fighting spirit’ – by lining them up in front of a camera and kicking them in the genitals.
Pictures from a propaganda video shot at an ISIS training camp in Yemen, purports to show the baffling exercise being part of the hardening of new recruits.
A handful of terrorists-in-training can be seen standing with their legs apart while an ISIS instructor kicks them in the groin with force.
They’re nuts: An image from an ISIS propaganda video shows ISIS recruits being kicked in the genitals at a terrorist training camp in Yemen
It is believed that this has been done to show the ability of ISIS terrorists to endure pain.
However, as this is a single image, there is no evidence to show that this practice did not cause serious harm or pain to the recruits.
Other stills from the video show recruits carrying out target practice, assault courses and doing pull-ups.
The images were allegedly shot at the Sheikh Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani training camp in Yemen, where ISIS began to establish itself in 2014.
The war in Yemen began the same year, when ousted former president Ali Abdullah Saleh and his supporters joined forces with the Shiite Huthi rebels, who are backed by Iran.
Terrorists in training: ISIS began to establish itself in Yemen in 2014, using the chaos of a civil war to convince young men and women to join them
Lining up: Recruits stand in front of the black flag of ISIS holding rifles
Assault course for assaulters: The terrorists-to-be are also seen doing an assault course
In 2015, the conflict escalated when a Saudi Arabia-led coalition lent its support to the Sunni government.
The rebels control most of northern Yemen, including the Red Sea coast, while the government controls several pockets near the Saudi border, including the port of Midi.
To date, the civil war has claimed the lives of more than 8,500 civilians, and thousands of fighters, with the UN recently singling out the Saudi-led coalition as causing civilian deaths with air-strikes.
The chaos of war has allowed ISIS – the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria – to establish itself in the country and to use the lack of stability to recruit new fighters after losing ground in its ‘origin’ countries for months.
Its cross-border Syrian and Iraqi ‘caliphate’ effectively collapsed in July when U.S.-backed Iraqi forces captured Mosul, the group’s de facto capital in Iraq, in a nine-month battle.
Another image shows the recruits at the end of the assault course, doing pull-ups
Bizarre: The pictures are from a video shot at the Sheikh Abu Muhammad Al-Adnani training camp in Yemen
In talks: It is thought ISIS could be looking to establish itself elsewhere now that the organisation is losing its territories in Syria and Iraq
Today, Kurdish officials reported that hundreds of ISIS fighters militants surrendered after the jihadist group was driven out of its last stronghold in northern Iraq.
The suspects were part of a group of men who fled toward Kurdish-held lines when Iraqi government forces captured the ISIS base in Hawija, the official told Reuters, asking not to be identified.
The report of the Sunni Muslim militants fleeing, rather than fighting to the finish as in previous battles, suggested their morale may be crumbling, according to Hisham al-Hashimi, a Baghdad-based expert on ISIS affairs.
ISIS’s last territory in Iraq is now a stretch skirting the western border with Syria, including the border town of al-Qaim.
Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said yesterday that this last piece of territory would be recaptured before the end of the year, marking the final defeat of the militants in Iraq.
The militants still hold areas in Syria, but are retreating there in the face of two sets of hostile forces – a U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led coalition and Syrian government troops backed by Iran and Russia.