Aussie jihad kids must come home: grandfather

The grandfather of a Sydney boy pictured holding aloft the severed head of a Syrian soldier is pleading for government help to bring the seven-year-old and his siblings back to Australia.

The grisly photograph of the boy, the son of wanted terrorist Khaled Sharrouf, sparked horrified reactions when it surfaced yesterday.

The boy's maternal grandfather, Peter Nettleton, a truck driver from Panania in Sydney's southwest, told News Corp he heard about the photo while listening to the radio yesterday.

He said he thought Sharrouf and his daughter Tara had taken their five children, two girls and three boys, to Malaysia to stay with Sharrouf's sister while he fought in Syria.

"I'm scared for the children," he said.

"Can't the government do something to pull these kids away from that man?"

Mr Nettleton said he has been estranged from his daughter since she married Sharrouf, her high school sweetheart, and converted to Islam.

Sharrouf has been fighting for the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. He posted the horrific photograph of his son on Twitter beside the caption: "That's my boy!"

Sharrouf slipped out of Australia last year on his brother's passport, after being banned him from leaving the country because of the terrorism threat he posed.

He was convicted in 2009 of stockpiling bomb-making materials and plotting terrorist attacks in Sydney and Melbourne.