Taliban fighters used a four-month-old baby to hide a bomb as part of a plot to carry out an attack in an Afghan city.
Terrorists tried to conceal explosive material within the tiny child’s clothing as they were making their way to Kunduz to carry out an atrocity.
But they were stopped by police as they entered the city and five people, including one woman, were arrested.
Taliban fighters used a four-month-old baby to hide a bomb as part of a plot to carry out an attack in an Afghan city. It is believed that this photo shows the child. The image was provided by Memri and is thought to have been issued by Afghan officials
According to the Kabul Times, the explosives were ‘carefully hidden on the body of the infant’.
The group was stopped while trying to enter the city, in northern Afghanistan.
Sowita Abulrahizai the deputy chief of the Independent Human Rights Commission of Afghanistan said of the incident: ‘Using children in armed conflicts is the most brutal and vicious act in the society, because such acts are categorically banned by the Islamic shari’a and enforced laws of the country.’
The arrests came as it emerged that as many as six children were killed in fighting near the central Afghan city of Ghazni on Friday.
Terrorists tried to conceal explosive material within the tiny child’s clothing as they were making their way to Kunduz to carry out an atrocity. File picture shows Afghan forces near the city
But there were conflicting accounts of how they died, with officials blaming the Taliban and others saying they died in an air strike by Afghan forces.
Following high-profile attacks on the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul and a compound of the Save the Children aid group in Jalalabad in recent days, the violence in Ghazni highlighted the daily toll on Afghan civilians across the country.
Provincial officials said a Taliban mortar attack struck the village while the children were outside, killing the six and wounding two.
However local people said the children died in an air strike by Afghan security forces, which have been conducting an increasing number of air operations as their fledgling air force has grown over the past year.
According to the latest report from the United Nations, 2,640 civilians were killed and 5,379 wounded between January and September last year, with more than a third killed in ground engagements.
Armed conflict killed 689 children and wounded another 1,791 during the period