More Kids With Guns

Now this must be the most arresting image to appear in the press in recent days.

A 7 year-old boy named Ahmed - casually smoking a cigarette with an AK47 over his shoulder - as he takes a break from his duties with the Free Syrian Army.

I don't know what's more shocking - a 7 year-old smoking or the sight of such a young child wielding a powerful weapon.

Now I might just understand the gun business if it were driven by a desperate last throw of the dice - a kill or be killed act.

But I can't really get my head round other adults encouraging the boy to smoke - what's that all about?

Either way it's a dreadful business - as different factions of Islam battle for supremacy in a brutal and bloody civil war in Syria - which cost over 6,000 lives last month alone.

Ahmed's picture was taken by a New York-born Italian photographer - Sebastiano Tomada Piccolomini.

I hope they both survive the carnage - and live to tell their tales.