Egyptian kids would rather play 'ISIS executioners' than 'cops and robbers'

Global Voices Online
Children in El-Mahalla El-Kubra role-playing as ISIS fightering and “slaughtering” other children. Faces in this screenshot were blurred by Global Voices Online.

Children from Egypt's El-Mahalla El-Kubra, a city north of Cairo in the Nile Delta, were recently recorded “slaughtering” other children in the style of ISIS' notorious execution videos.

The video may have been made after ISIS' offshoot in Libya beheaded 21 Coptic Christian workers from Egypt who were captured more than a month ago. On February 15, the terrorists posted a gruesome and bloody video on YouTube that showed the beheading of the hostages, creating an uproar in Egypt and prompting the Egyptian air force to bomb ISIS sites across the border.

The video raises more questions about the "merits" of sharing horrific videos detailing the terror group's crimes. ISIS, which controls large swaths of land in Iraq and Syria that it calls the "Islamic State," has taken great pride in releasing the highly-produced videos that often feature executioners with Western accents.

Many people have called for media outlets to suppress videos and images of ISIS executions to cut down on their propaganda value for the group. But despite a cat and mouse game to remove the materials online, many continue to share the videos.

Egyptian blogger Ahmed Shokeir tweeted a photograph from the video showing the children “playing ISIS."

Children in Mahalla playing...ISIS

Facebook user Tamer Abdo Amin also uploaded the video, which has been watched 86,000 times.

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