Reuters and Sapa-ap
Kabul
An eight-year-old Afghan girl was killed when a bag of explosives given to her by Taliban insurgents exploded as she approached a police outpost in southern Afghanistan.
“The insurgents handed over a bag with a homemade bomb to an eight-year-old girl and asked her to take it to police forces,” the Ministry of Interior said yesterday.
“As the girl was getting close to the police, it exploded and killed the girl.”
There have been occasional cases of insurgents using female bombers, but the use of children had been almost unheard of until recently.
The incident took place in Char Chino in Uruzgan province in southern Afghanistan. There were no police casualties.
It comes as a suicide car bomber attacked a clinic in eastern Afghanistan where women and children had lined up for maternity care and vaccinations, killing at least 35 people in one of the deadliest attacks against civilians this year.
The sport utility vehicle smashed through a wall at the Akbarkhail Public Medical Centre on Saturday. The force of the blast caused the building to collapse.
Survivors frantically dug through the rubble with shovels and bare hands. At least 53 people were hurt.
Wary of being blamed for civilian casualties, the Taliban denied it was behind the bombing in Azra district in Logar province.
“This attack was not done by our fighters,” Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said.
An army helicopter was dispatched to deliver medical supplies and to ferry survivors to other hospitals in the far-flung district.