Taliban Use Child Suicide Bomber

On the first day of its promised spring offensive, the Taliban used a 12-year-old boy as a suicide bomber in an attack today that killed four civilians, President Hamid Karzai said, calling the child's recruitment inhumane and un-Islamic. It was one of several attacks across the country that killed seven people, government officials said.

The suicide bomber detonated a vest packed with explosives inside a bazaar in the Barmal district of Paktika province, 160 miles southeast of Kabul, on the border with Pakistan. The blast killed four civilians and wounded 12, including the head of a new district council in the Shakeen area of Paktika province. (More Taliban stories.)