Activist group Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently have smuggled videos out of ISIS‘s de facto capital of Raqqa, Syria, that show children training to kill. (Scroll down for CNN video report)
On 29 June 2014, ISIS proclaimed itself to be a worldwide caliphate, with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi being named its caliph.
As a caliphate, it claims religious, political and military authority over all Muslims worldwide, and that “the legality of all emirates, groups, states, and organisations, becomes null by the expansion of the khilāfah’s [caliphate’s] authority and arrival of its troops to their areas”.
The United Nations has held ISIL responsible for human rights abuses and war crimes, and Amnesty International has reported ethnic cleansing by the group on a “historic scale”. The group has been designated a terrorist organisation by the United Nations, the European Union and member states, the United States, India, Indonesia, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Syria and other countries. Over 60 countries are directly or indirectly waging war against ISIL.
