Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Karzai slams Taliban use of children for attacks

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has strongly slammed Taliban’s use of children for bomb attacks.
The presidential palace said in a statement on Tuesday that President Karzai has condemned Taliban’s use of children for their bomb attacks as “un-Islamic and against Afghan tradition,” ordering the Interior Ministry to hand over the ten-year-old Sposhmay to her family.
According to the interior Ministry, Afghan police arrested a ten-year-old girl named Spozhmay in the remote village of Uwshi in Charchino District on January 5, moments before she was about to blow up a police checkpoint.
She was later taken to Helmand’s capital Lashkar Gah to be questioned.
The girl said that she had been ordered by her brother, who is a Taliban commander, to conduct the attack, explaining that her brother coerced her to wear the vest and walk to the police checkpoint in the district of Khanashin, after having an argument with her stepmother. The Afghan president said Spozhmay should be returned to her family after getting guarantees from local leaders that she would not be harmed by her family.
Spozhmay is currently in custody by Afghan police.
According to the reports, at least 20 teenage boys were detained earlier, all being used by Taliban militants for bomb attacks. The Afghan president, though, released all the teenagers.

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