US-ARMED terrorist leaders in Syria tried to distance themselves yesterday from their foot soldiers’ brutal beheading of a Palestinian refugee child.

Their denials came as the US State Department hinted that it might halt arms shipments to its head-chopping proxy forces.

Video emerged on Tuesday of members of Harakat Nour al-Din al-Zinki taunting the boy before severing his head with a knife in the back of their pick-up truck.

The child was reportedly captured in the insurgent-occupied Handarat refugee camp north of Aleppo city, where thousands of militants are now besieged.

The terrorists claimed that the 13-year-old was a spy for the al-Quds Brigade, a militia recruited from Handarat to fight alongside the Syrian army.

But the al-Quds Brigade dismissed the terrorists’ justification for their latest atrocity, pointing out that the boy had an intravenous line in his arm in the video, indicating he was a hospital patient.

Leaders of Nour al-Din al-Zinki, which receives US arms including Tow anti-tank missiles smuggled in from neighbouring Turkey, tried yesterday to explain the vile act as merely “an individual error.”

They claimed: “All individuals who undertook the violation have been detained and turned over to the committee for investigations in accordance with the relevant legal standards.”

US State Department spokesman Mark Toner sought to avoid Washington being held responsible for the crime, claiming it was as yet unproven.

“If we can prove that this was indeed what happened and this group was involved … it would give us pause about any assistance or any further involvement with this group,” he said.

Meanwhile, Syrian Foreign Minister Wa’el Mu’allem blamed the French air force contingent in the US-led “coalition” for Tuesday’s bombing raid on al-Tukhar village, north-east of Aleppo, which killed more than 120 civilians.

Mr Mu’allem sent a letter of protest to the United Nations yesterday over the raid, part of the French and US-backed YPG Kurdish separatist militia’s assault on nearby Islamic State-occupied Manbij.

On Tuesday, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson changed his tune on supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s fight to retain power.

Ahead of his first official meeting with his US counterpart John Kerry, he said that “the suffering of the Syrian people will not end while Assad remains in power.”