Islamabad, July 31 - Four boys from Swat in Pakistan's restive northwest who were kidnapped by militants to be trained as suicide bombers have narrated harrowing tales of their ordeal in captivity, saying they were told to target their families if prevented from joining the jihad against security forces.

They said militants had taken them by force from their villages to training camps in different parts of the Matta sub-district where a large number of other boys were being trained as suicide bombers, Dawn reported Friday in a dispatch from Swat's largest city of Mingora.

On Thursday, security forces presented them before a team of reporters in Mingora. Two of them, who were in a camp named Fazal Banda, said at least 250 boys, most of them in their teens, were being trained for terrorist acts and suicide bombings.

One of them said he was working in the field when armed men forced him into a car. 'They blindfolded me and told me that I would get training for suicide bombing.'

'The gunmen took me to the Fazal Banda camp where militants were training a large number of boys. They told us that security personnel were infidels and we should wage jihad against them. If our own families stopped us from joining jihad, we should target them as well.'

Another boy said he was in his village when a group men sought his help to load luggage onto a vehicle. 'When I went to help them, some masked men bundled me into the vehicle and drove away. They put a mask on my face and removed it at a training camp inChuparyal.'

He said some 150 boys were being trained at the camp. Some of them had voluntarily joined the militants while some had been kidnapped, he added.