[dennisw]

That's my take as well. That said, it is always possible that it is not staged, but it is not relevant.

I've seen many Arab generated photos of street urchin type kids hanging around Jihadi shooters. It's almost unavoidable since with high birthrates they have many kids in the streets of Gaza etc

The Jihad fighters also view the kids as learning the trade. Fetching tea and ammo for them

Thus the photo being minimally staged is the way I see it. The boys were there for the action anyway and the Arab photographer only had to get them to pose a tiny bit

[SlowBoat407]

This could actually be a training session for new jihadis.