A man looks deep into the camera and pleads, in Arabic: "You, there in Europe, watching this video. I'm calling you."
With urgency in his voice, he refers to children being murdered and women being raped at the hands of the enemy.
"We really need you here. This is your opportunity for paradise."
"Paradise" via the distinct possibility of death on a Syrian battlefield, he means.
The man is calling for recruits to join the Al Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda affiliate that makes up part of Syria's fragmented armed opposition fighting the government forces of President Bashar al-Assad.
As unappealing as that "opportunity" may sound to the average European, the message has resonated with hundreds of youths here who have disappeared from their schools and homes and turned up in Syria.
Most are lifelong Muslims, while others are recent converts, a shocking number of them just teenagers, reportedly as young as 15.
Teenage Western recruits in Syria's uprising throw yet another complex layer on the country's 2-year-old civil war, which has killed more than 70,000 and displaced millions more. As it is, Western powers are grappling with how best to aid rebel groups that are fighting alongside extremists to replace Assad's regime.
It's also stirred communities here in Europe where authorities are on alert for any signs that residents are drawn to violent extremism.
The International Center for the Study of Radicalization, a London think tank, estimates as many as 600 Europeans have made this journey for jihad, with one of the largest contingents coming from Belgium. Belgian authorities estimate the number to be possibly as high as 80 individuals.
Among them is Jejoen Bontinck, an 18-year-old from Antwerp. His story has been grabbing headlines in recent weeks because his father, Dimitri Bontinck, is now in Aleppo in a desperate search for him, posting dramatic updates on Facebook.
The father has said his son was "brainwashed" by members of the outlawed Islamist organization Sharia4Belgium who befriended him in a city park.
Brian de Mulder, a 19-year-old also from Antwerp, is known to be there too, also drawn in by the shadowy group.
When family learned he was in Syria earlier this year, they held a joint press conference with the openly anti-Muslim Belgian nationalist party, Vlaams Belang, calling on the government to do more against Sharia4Belgium and its ilk.
After Belgian authorities raided four dozen houses and arrested six on suspicion of supporting terrorism last month, De Mulder, now known as Abu Qasem Brazili, sent the family a message saying he never wanted to see them again.
They weren't the only ones.
Two 16-year-olds from the Brussels suburb of Schaerbeek went missing for a few hours during their school's Easter break. They then called their parents from Turkey to say they were headed into the Syrian war zone.
The mother of one of the teens flew to Turkey immediately, coming back to Belgium days later heartbroken, with no information about her son.
With little or no contact with their kids, families are left scouring Al Nusra public relations videos, looking for confirmation their children are still alive.
Such YouTube videos were one of the first signs of proof the Europeans were there fighting with the Islamists, says Hicham El-Mzairh, an Antwerp city councilor with Muslim roots who knows several of the young men who've gone.
El-Mzairh points to a video, posted by a group he says is an offshoot of Al Nusra, of a firefight in which two of the young gunmen speak to each other in Dutch with what El-Mzairh describes as an unmistakable Antwerp accent.
Also unmistakable is the fact the two Flemish youth are rather new to this lifestyle, scrambling awkwardly up sand banks with their weapons.
"Abu what's-his-name," one says, in Dutch, addressing the other, before remembering his colleague's new name. "Abu Basir," he goes on, "only shoot when you see them."
