Shaukat Khan was shocked when he heard his teenaged son Zarak talk about suicide bombings and paradise, where he said those who carried out attacks on 'enemies' went.

Within days, Khan withdrew his son from the madrassa in which he had been enrolled since the age of 12 and moved his family from Kohat in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province to Lahore [Images] last year.

Today, Zarak, 16, needs to do little more than sit in his chair, flicking through television channels, to bring a fond smile to his mother Rehma Bibi's face. She is glad to simply have her oldest son at home and safe.

'They wanted to make him into a suicide bomber, but we got him away from the seminary school,' Rehma told the IRIN news service of the UN.

Over the past year, Pakistan has been struck by a wave of deadly attacks, including some 70 suicide bombings. At least 636 people, including 419 members of Pakistan's security forces, were killed in the suicide blasts.

More suicide bombings in 2008 have already killed over 70 people. On February 11, a teenaged suicide bomber in the restive North Waziristan tribal area blew himself up near the convoy of an election candidate, killing 10 people.

The toll of such attacks continues to rise, with suicide bombings having claimed over 2,000 victims in Pakistan over the past decade.

Many others have been gravely injured and some disabled for life.

Many of the bombers, who blew themselves up, were children, while teenagers who have been arrested have provided chilling accounts of how they had been trained to carry out such attacks.

'These young boys are as much the victims of terrorism as those they kill. They are victims of the most brutal exploitation,' said Anees Khan, a Lahore-based psychologist who is conducting a study for a NGO on the use of children as bombers.

The manner in which teenagers have been used in suicide bombings has become evident in recent months.

In December 2007, an attack in Kohat that killed 11 army cadets was carried out by a bomber aged 16 or 17 who detonated explosives strapped to his body as he approached his targets.

In January, a boy of around the same age blew himself up at a Shia congregation hall in Peshawar in a sectarian attack on worshippers gathered there.

But it is the manner in which these boys are indoctrinated that is most revealing.

A few weeks ago, 15-year-old Aitezaz Shah, detained in the northern town of Dera Ismail Khan, told investigators he had been assigned to act as a 'back-up' bomber in the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto [Images], who was killed in a suicide bombing on 27 December.

Shah, currently in police custody in Rawalpindi, also revealed to sleuths how he had been recruited by extremists after dropping out of school in Karachi in May last year.

Pakistani officials said they had recently uncovered another trend suicide jackets strapped on teenagers being detonated by remote control by 'handlers' to ensure that the boys could not change their mind about carrying out an attack.

Experts and rights activists say these young boys are as much the victims of terrorism as those they kill. They are victims of the most brutal exploitation, the experts said.

Shah was trained at a madrassa in the tribal area of South Waziristan and was preparing to carry out other attacks.

A year ago, Hainullah, another 15-year-old Pakistani suicide bomber trained in Waziristan, was arrested in neighbouring Afghanistan where he had been sent to attack US troops.

Hainullah said he was offered a 'way out of a life of boredom' at a seminary by a preacher who offered him visions of paradise where rivers of milk and honey flowed, in exchange for giving up his life by becoming a suicide bomber.

A few months later, in a case that made headlines, 14-year-old would-be bomber Rafiqullah was pardoned by Afghan President Hamid Karzai and sent back to Pakistan after being arrested wearing a suicide vest packed with explosives.

"It is a sad fact that a Muslim child was sent to a religious school to learn about Islam but was misled by the enemies of Afghanistan," Karzai said at the time.