'Hungry, Thirsty & Filthy': Man Trained Kids to Commit School Shootings in US

Eleven malnourished children have been rescued from a ramshackle compound in a New Mexico desert where they had been held by two armed men who trained them in the use of firearms, ABC News reported, citing court documents.

According to prosecutors, 39-year-old Siraj Wahhaj, who had an AR-15 rifle and four pistols when police officers encountered him, was training some of the children, aged one to 15, to commit school shootings.

Police said the compound included "no food, clean water, leaking propane gas, filthy conditions, hazardous wood and broken glass, no hygiene or medical care."

Another armed man and three women, believed to be the children's mothers, were also arrested after the remains of Wahhaj's missing three-year-old son, Abdula-Ghani Wahhaj, were discovered at the compound.

A foster parent of one of the 11 children held at the compound  told police that Wahhaj "had trained the child in the use of an assault rifle in preparation for future school shootings."

"These children were hungry, they were thirsty, they were filthy," Taos County Sheriff Jerry Hogrefe told reporters.

The children are now in the care of the New Mexico Children, Youth and Families Department.

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According to US media reports, Siraj Wahhajj's father, Imam Siriaj Wahhaj, a prominent Muslim leader in Brooklyn, New York, testified at the trial of Omar Abdel-Rahman, who was later convicted of the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.

In 1991, he became the first Muslim to lead an opening prayer before the US House of Representatives in Washington.