NEW YORK, June 28 (UPI) -- The use of an 8-year-old girl as a suicide bomber in Afghanistan was appalling and "almost unimaginable," a senior United Nations official said.
Radhika Coomaraswamy, special representative of the U.N. secretary-general for children and armed conflict, was referring to the weekend incident in which, as reported by The New York Times, an 8-year-old girl was tricked by the Taliban into carrying a bag containing a bomb that was set off remotely as the girl neared a police vehicle in the remote village of Uwshi in central Afghanistan's Char Chino district.
Police said the girl, who was not aware the bag she was carrying contained a bomb, was the only person who died in the explosion.
Coomaraswamy said she "was appalled to learn today of the use of a young girl as an unwitting suicide bomber."
"The disgraceful act of putting a bomb in a little girl's basket and sending her, unknowing, to kill, is almost unimaginable," she said. "The group or individuals responsible must be brought to justice."
Coomaraswamy condemned another weekend incident in which an explosion outside a hospital in Logar province in eastern Afghanistan killed at least 37, wounded more than 50 and damaged much of the hospital.
"Attacks on hospitals are two-fold atrocities," Coomaraswamy said. "Not only do they kill and wound girls and boys, they leave thousands of women and children without access to treatment."
In Kabul, the U.N. assistance mission said much of the damage from the explosion was to the maternity ward, and that many of those killed and injured were women and children.
