South Korean officials say a teenager, who went missing in Turkey last month, has joined the ISIL Takfiri terrorist group in violence-wracked Syria and is receiving training there.
The director of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, Lee Byung-kee, told a closed-door parliamentary committee on Tuesday that the 18-year-old middle school dropout, identified only by his surname Kim, is receiving training at an undisclosed ISIL camp.
The teenage boy was last seen leaving his hotel in the southern Turkish city of Kilis near the border with Syria on January 10.
According to the South Korean Foreign Ministry, CCTV footage obtained by the Turkish police showed Kim taking an unlicensed taxi, together with an unidentified man, outside a mosque near his hotel. The pair then got off close to a refugee camp in the town of Besiriye.
The ministry further said that it has “no intelligence on his whereabouts,” stressing that it “has been closely in cooperation with the Turkish government on the matter.”
Kim had reportedly posted a series of messages on his Twitter account in October last year, asking for guidelines to join ISIL.
A recent UN Security Council report said more than 15,000 militants with over 80 nationalities, including Americans and Europeans, have joined terrorist groups fighting the Syrian government.
Meanwhile, the Soufan Group, a New York-based intelligence firm, estimated in June 2014 that at least 3,000 militants of European origin have been active in several militancy-riddled regions across the Arab country.
The ISIL militants currently control swathes of territory across Syria and Iraq. They have carried out heinous atrocities in both countries, including mass executions and beheadings.