07/01/2014
 |
| Sphozmai, 10, who was about to be used by the Taliban as a suicide bomber, sits at a police office in Helmand province |
KANDAHAR: Afghan police on Tuesday searched for a Taliban
commander who allegedly forced his 10-year-old sister to wear an
explosives-packed vest on an aborted suicide attack in the southern
province of Helmand.
The interior ministry said the girl, named as Spozhmai, was detained
before she detonated the vest near a police checkpoint in the district
of Khanashin.
Speaking on Monday at a press conference, the girl said she had been
ordered by her brother to undertake the suicide mission but had decided
not to carry it through.
“We have appointed a team to investigate this,” Omar Zwak, the Helmand governor's spokesman, told AFP.
“They will try to find the brother and father of the girl, and they will visit the police post and talk to the
police who found and detained the girl.
We are trying to find out what exactly has happened.”
Amid several conflicting accounts of the incident, some officials
said she had been wearing the vest when she was arrested, while others
said no vest had been recovered.
The Tolo TV news channel said the girl was unable to operate the button to detonate the explosives.
She told reporters in Lashkar Gah, capital of Helmand, that her
brother had coerced her to put on the vest and walk to the police post
after an argument with her stepmother.
The girl said she had dumped the vest in a river before being arrested. She was in police custody on Tuesday.
No comments:
Post a Comment