Children as young as 10 years old increasingly face horrific abuse in war-torn Somalia as the Islamist militant group Al-Shabaab has targeted them to replenish its diminishing ranks of fighters , according to a Human Rights Watch report released Tuesday . While the recruitment of child soldiers by the Somali insurgent group is not new , the report said the scale of child abductions over the past two years is like nothing documented in the past . Shocking patterns have also emerged of children serving as human shields on the battlefields , according to Human Rights Watch . `` We 're beginning to see more and more instances where children are essentially being used as cannon fodder , '' Tirana Hassan of Human Rights Watch told CNN . Al-Shabaab fighters abduct young girls and boys from their homes or schools , in some cases taking entire classes , the report said . Children can be sent out to recruit other children , according to the organization . One survivor told Human Rights Watch he was asked by a group of kids to play football at a nearby field . When he arrived , he and others were gathered up and sent to training camps , the survivor told Human Rights Watch . The camps are places where children live in fear , said Hassan , an emergencies researcher for the international human rights group . `` They see injured and dead fighters , many of them children , coming back from the battlefield , '' Hassan added . Recruits are taught to use weapons and to throw hand grenades and are subjected to a myriad of abuses including rape , assault and forced marriages , according to Hassan . Dozens of recruits , mostly ages 14 to 17 , are driven by truckloads to the front line , where they are told to jump out only to be mowed down by gunfire while Al-Shabaab fighters launch rockets from behind , according to Hassan . A 15-year-old boy recruited by Al-Shabaab from his school in Mogadishu in 2010 told Human Rights Watch that `` out of all my classmates -- about 100 boys -- only two of us escaped , the rest were killed . '' `` The children were cleaned off . The children all died and the bigger soldiers ran away , '' the youth told Human Rights Watch . Somalia 's transitional government also was criticized by Human Rights Watch for not ending its own use of child soldiers . `` Al-Shabaab 's horrific abuses do not excuse Somalia 's Transitional Federal Government , '' said Zama Coursen-Neff , the group 's deputy children 's rights director . `` The TFG should live up to its commitments to stop recruiting and using children as soldiers , and punish those who do . '' Gen. Abdulkadir Ali Diimi , the head of Somalia 's National Army , said he was unable to comment on the report . The 104-page report , released two days ahead of a Somalia conference hosted by the British government , grimly details countless violations against children based on more than 160 interviews conducted over the last two years with Somali youngsters who escaped from Al-Shabaab forces , as well as parents and teachers who fled to Kenya . `` For children of Somalia , nowhere is safe , '' Coursen-Neff said . On Thursday , senior representatives from more than 40 governments will converge on London in a diplomatic push to find political solutions to restore stability in Somalia .
New report says child abductions by Al-Shabaab on the rise in Somalia . Children used as human shields , Human Rights Watch says . Somalia transitional government criticized for using child soldiers . Comment: