Boko Haram insurgents kill their sons and use blood to wash their hands when they return from fighting, a report funded by the Pulitzer Centre on Crisis Reporting has revealed.

The story, which is on the cover of this week’s New York Times Magazine, is based on the testimony of four boy soldiers of Boko Haram who escaped from the insurgents’ enclave.

Sarah Topol, the journalist who wrote the story, spoke with 25 children in Borno State about their abduction.

“The stories they told me about rituals like infant slaughter and bathing your hands in blood have not been previously reported as part of life under Boko Haram. But their stories were consistent, and rumours of such acts have circulated around northeast Nigeria,” Topol wrote.

One of the boy soldiers, Mustapha (not real name), who rose to become a deputy to an emir in one of the Boko Haram’s units, narrated how infant killing and washing of hands with blood were carried out.

“Whenever a woman at Mustapha’s base delivered a son, he reported the birth to the babban emir. The other emirs did the same,” Sarah wrote.

“One month after the birth, a man from the palace would come to collect the baby, and everyone would know. In the palace courtyard, the baby would be put on a special table with a hole in the middle.

“Anybody could watch as they lay the baby flat, neck over the hole. The emir from the unit would be given a special knife — sharp, double-edged with a black handle. He would use it to slaughter the baby. The blood would drain through the hole and into a bucket. That was how the insurgents slaughtered their sons. Mustapha couldn’t ask questions. He slaughtered four babies this way. It was just something that needed doing.”

Whenever Mustapha and other insurgents returned from fighting, they would go through the ritual of soaking their hands in blood. The blood was collected from the slaughtered infants and adults killed by the insurgents in their base.

Topol wrote in the report that she interviewed the boys over several days in her hotel through an interpreter.

The boys, who are now between 14 to 18 years old, were kidnapped by Boko Haram in Baga.

According to the report,  Boko Haram has kidnapped 10,000 boys over the last decade.