Iraqi boy, 15, caught wearing suicide belt at football stadium

In August footage emerged of Mohammed Ahmed Ismail's attempted suicide bombing of a stadium being thwarted by the Iraqi security forces. Photo / Kurdistan 24 TV news via AP

A 15-year-old boy who was stopped as he tried to enter a football stadium wearing a suicide belt has been talking for the first time about the training he was given by Isis and his disappointment of failing to carry out his deadly mission.

TV footage of the dramatic incident in Kirkuk, in northern Iraq, emerged in August when he was detained by security forces.

But today the boy was identified for the first time as Mohammed Ahmed Ismail and details emerged about the brainwashing he has undergone, the Daily Mail reports.

Iraqi security forces detained the boy after removing a suicide vest from him in Kirkuk in Iraq. Photo / Kurdistan 24 TV news via AP

Mohammed was part of the Cubs of the Caliphate, a group of teenagers and even young children who underwent intensive training for suicide bombing and other violent missions serving Isis, who are referred to by the Iraqi authorities as Daesh.

Mohammed said he was ordered to carry out the stadium attack by an older teenager, called Dureed.

He told The Times: "I was hesitating. Dureed kept urging 'just walk into the middle of them and blow yourself up', but there was something inside me that was resisting. I couldn't do it."

Two other suicide bombers - one of them, his cousin Ala - set off their devices in Kirkuk that same day but an intelligence officer became suspicious of Mohammed and confronted him, grabbing his arms. His explosives belt was torn off him.

Mohammed told The Times: "I felt a bit relieved, but also confused. I didn't know what to do any more."

TV footage of the dramatic incident showed the security forces disarming him and bundling him into a lorry.

The incident happened an hour after another suicide bomber targeted a Shiite mosque in the city, and 24 hours earlier another teenage bomber had killed 51 guests at a Kurdish wedding in the Turkish city of Gaziantep.

At the time Mohammed - who had been wearing a Barcelona football shirt with Lionel Messi's name on the back - was detained it was reported he had told the authorities he "had been kidnapped by masked men who put the explosives on him and sent him to the area".

But a clearer picture has since emerged.

It turns out that Mohammed's father, a lorry driver, joined ISIS earlier this year and sent his son away to an ISIS training camp near Mosul.

The boy was given a new identity - Abu Musab - and subjected to months of rigorous brainwashing about the jihadist cause.

The boy told police he had been abducted by masked men who strapped a vest to him but this has turned out to be a lie. Photo / Kurdistan 24 TV news via AP

He did not volunteer for "martyrdom" but said he accepted it and the night before his arrest he was smuggled into Kirkuk hidden in a lorry loaded with sand.

Mohammed is now in custody along with 53 other youngsters, many of whom have been charged with terrorist offences.

Colonel Azer Mohammed Juamar, who is in charge of the custody centre, said Mohammed remained "unrepentant and dangerous".

He told The Times: "I am absolutely sure he would go back to Daesh the moment he was released. As soon as he got here, he started to gather all of the other children together to give them lectures on Islam and lead them in prayer, just as he had learnt in Daesh."

Colonel Juamar said: "You put something as a cute as Daesh indoctrination in a child's mind and it does not come out very easily."

ISIS increased the number of suicide attacks by the Cubs of the Caliphate in response to military setbacks in Iraq and Syria.

Earlier this year it was revealed that ISIS had released an app teaching the Arabic alphabet to its "cubs of the caliphate" - using cartoon images of weaponry.

The terror group uses pictures of tanks, ammunition and swords to help children remember certain letters in its bizarre learning aid.