Human Rights Watch, an international human rights organisation, published a report on Sunday saying Afghan children as young as 14 have fought in the Fatemiyoun division of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The division is made up of Afghan volunteers supported by Iran, fighting with government forces in Syria. The HRW research was based on photographs on tombstones in Iranian cemeteries where combatants killed in Syria had been buried. One of the eight graves showed a 14-year-old buried in the martyr’s section of Tehran’s Behesht-e-Zahra cemetery. The HRW Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson said, “Iran should immediately end the recruitment of child soldiers and bring back any Afghan children it has sent to fight in Syria.” According to media reports, the Fatemiyoun division may number 14,000 fighters who have been trained and supported by Iran.
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