6-year-old Juma Gil (Courtesy CBN News)
Shocked American and Afghan troops are affirming the story of a 6-year-old boy who says he was recruited by the Taliban for a suicide bomb attack against U.S. soldiers.
Juma Gil, raised by an older sister in Afghanistan's southern Ghazni province, said Taliban fighters last month cornered him and forced him to wear a vest they said would spray out flowers when he touched a button, according to the Scotsman newspaper.
The fighters told him to "throw your body" at the American soldiers when he saw them.
"When they first put the vest on my body I didn't know what to think, but then I felt the bomb," Juma said through an interpreter at the joint U.S.-Afghan base in Ghazni, the Scotsman reported. "After I worked out it was a bomb, I went to the Afghan soldiers for help."
CBN News produced a video account of the story.
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The paper said the boy's story could not be independently verified, but local government leaders backed his account, and the U.S. and NATO military missions said they believed his story.
The Taliban, though spokesman Qari Yousef Ahmadi, denied it uses child fighters.
"We don't need to use a child," he said by satellite phone, according to the Scotsman. "It's against Islamic law, it's against humanitarian law. This is propaganda against the Taliban."
In April, however, a Taliban video showed fighters giving instructions on beheading to a boy who appeared to be about 12-years-old.
A NATO officer, Maj. John Thomas, said he initially was sceptical of Juma's story, "but everything I've heard makes me more comfortable."
"We want to publicize this as much as we can to the Afghan people so that they can protect their children from these killers," he said.

Orignal Source         Video