Officials say a young girl thought to be the sister of a Taliban commander in southern Afghanistan tried to carry out a bombing attack with a suicide vest.
Police said the girl, whom outlets reported to be between 8 and 10 years old, was in a state of "shock and confusion" and was prodded by her brother to take on the mission, the BBC reports. The plot was allegedly foiled when an Afghan soldier spotted her. Accounts differ as to what happened next: either she could not detonate the jacket, or she was caught before she attempted to set off the device, the outlet wrote.
After interviewing an Afghan border police official, NBC News reports the girl's brother had given her the vest and instructed her to explode it at a police checkpoint in the Khan Nasheen district of Helmand province.
"She was crying" when she was approached by police, the official, Hamidullah Siddiqi, told NBC News.
New Delhi Television Limited (NDTV) identified the girl as "Spozhmay" and reported she was one of the youngest suicide-bombing female recruits the Afghan government had ever recorded.