Some 2,000 Iranians, one as young as seven, have signed up with a shadowy Islamist group to carry out suicide bombings in Iraq and Israel, a Tehran daily reported yesterday.

"So far 2,000 people have registered," the group's spokesman, Mohammad Samadi, told the reformist newspaper Shargh.

"Twenty-five percent are under 18 years, 55 percent are between 18 and 40, and the rest are 40 to 80," said Samadi, spokesman for the Committee for the Commemoration of Martyrs of the World Islamic Movement.

"The youngest is a seven-year old child who registered along with his family," Samadi added.

The group launched its recruitment drive late last month, taking names and telephone numbers of volunteers after the main weekly Muslim prayers on Fridays.

The action was intended to "show our friends in Iraq and all other Muslims that we are ready to give our lives to defend our honour and Islam's," Samadi said at the time, pointing to US military operations in the Iraqi holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, which are revered by Shias in Iran as well as Iraq.

"Suicide operations are the best way to fight the oppressors and they have already shown their worth in Lebanon and during the war between Iran and Iraq," he said, referring to the neighbours' bloody 1980-88 conflict.