A nine-year-old girl has been found with an eight kilogram suicide vest strapped to her body in Pakistan’s troubled north-west region. The Pakistani police said they detained the schoolgirl on Monday after learning she was allegedly told to blow up a police checkpoint, which wasn’t far from where they stopped her.

The girl was detained near Islam Darra police checkpoint, on the outskirts of Taimargara, the main town in the district of Lower Dir, about 50m from the actual checkpoint.

This region saw heavy fighting during 2009 when the Pakistani forces sought to defeat some of the Taliban insurgencies taking place there.

Police were yet to independently verify her claims, but it was the first time that such a young girl had been used for any similar purported suicide bombing attempt.

The young girl claimed to have been abducted several days earlier in the main north-western city of Peshawar, and had been taken to Lower Dir near the Afghan border, where she was readied for her attack.

Qazi Jamil-ur-Rehman, the regional police chief, told Agence France-Presse by telephone:

She was wearing eight kilogram’s of explosives which was quite heavy for her age. Her body language was suspicious.

She is an innocent school girl and was scared. She is with us and we are trying to reach her family.

The girl alarmingly appeared on national television wearing her blue and white school uniform and told reporters:

They kept me in a house and they told me to push the button when I reach near policemen.

Although militant groups have been known to use teenage boys for militant attacks, women and young children, especially girls, are more often than not victims and not perpetrators.

There have been recent claims that the Taliban have begun using child suicide bombers in areas along the eastern Afghan front, but police are doing all they can to curtail the problem before it gets any worse.

Police were now trying to locate the suspected orchestrators of the attack, two men and two women, who allegedly abducted the girl on her way to school.

[Source: M&G]