Booby-trapped...game controllers rigged by Isis to explode in the hands of children

THEY look like ordinary video game controllers - but these familiar toys are some of the sickest booby-traps ever used by Isis killers.

- Nicole Wootton-Cane

The jihadists often target children with an array of tempting household items turned into bombs that they leave behind in homes.

Some that have been made safe are held in a "black museum" of devices uncovered by a charity in northern Iraq.

They include TV remotes, taps and even clothes pegs that hid enough explosives to kill unwitting civilians returning to villages.

Retreating Isis terrorists scattered them in homes, schools and hospitals - but they now help Manchester charity Mines Advisory Group in its mission to find and destroys landmines, cluster munitions and bombs which remain deadly long after conflicts have ended.

Its staff have worked in Iraq since 1992, clearing arms from the IranIraq war of the 1980s, the first and second Gulf Wars plus the persecution of the Kurds by Saddam Hussein.

After much of Iraq fell to the Islamic State in 2014, MAG encountered Isis' improvised explosive devices. Lacking sufficient mainstream munitions, the Islamist group used its members' skills to come up with less-obvious explosives. Even though the Iraqi government says its war with Isis is over, it is feared hundreds of "everyday" IEDs remain.