The Jihadi baby - PHOTO+VIDEO

The chilling image is the latest photo believed to have been posted by militants fighting in Syria and Iraq as part of their online propaganda campaign.It shows the child - who appears to be less than six months old - lying on its back on the black flag now associated with the group terrorising the Middle East.Where other babies its age might have soft toys scattered around them, the child has been cynically positioned next to a Kalashnikov rifle, a pistol and hand grenades.The baby in the image - which was posted on Twitter beneath the hashtag #IS - is believed to be youngest child yet used as part of the group's social media campaign.The photo caused a furious backlash online, with one user accusing the organisation of using 'babies as weapons to kill the innocent'.The picture is the latest in a series of shocking images which raise fears that a generation of children in the region are being radicalised from a very young age.Last month, terrorist Khaled Sharrouf posted a Twitter image of his son, believed to be age seven, gripping the severed head of a Syrian soldier. His father, a suspected war criminal, posted the photo alongside the caption: 'That's my boy!'.Another photo posted by Sharrouf shows him posing with his three young sons dressed in identical camouflage fatigues and wielding machine guns.Earlier this week, disturbing footage emerged of a masked child firing an AK47 assault rifle while shouting Islamic slogans in Syria.Two short videos apparently filmed near Damascus were uploaded to YouTube by an user calling themselves Abd Sad.They show a young boy, who appears to be no older than six-years-old, being instructed to fire the weapon by an man who then praises him and encourages him to join in religious chanting.ISIS - which rebranded as Islamic State earlier this year after establishing a so-called caliphate in Syria and Iraq - has made it a policy to groom children to take part in jihad, brainwashing them from a young age before packing them off to training camps when they reach their teens.The Daily Star reported this morning that Scottish public schoolgirl Aqsa Mahmood, who moved to Syria and married an ISIS fighter, has also posted a similar photo of a baby holding a Kalashnikov online. Amnesty International this week accused ISIS of carrying out a systematic campaign of mass killings, abductions and ethnic cleansing in northern Iraq that could amount to war crimes.A report by the organisation also documented the abduction of hundreds of women and children and said the fate of most of those abducted is still unknown.(dailymail.co.uk)Bakudaily.Az