KANDAHAR: Afghan police on Tuesday searched for a Taliban commander who allegedly forced his 10-year-old sister to wear an explosivespacked vest for an aborted suicide attack in the southern province of Helmand. The interior ministry said the girl, named as Spozhmai, was detained before she detonated the vest near a police checkpoint in the district of Khanashin, but some local officials said the trigger button did not work when she pressed it.

Speaking at a press conference, the girl said she had been ordered by her brother to undertake the suicide mission but had decided at the last minute not to go through with it. “I was tired of my stepmother. My brother told me to wear the black vest, go to the police checkpoint and press the button,” she told local reporters. “I went past a river and decided to drop the vest. My brother fled and police arrested me. He had told me nothing would happen to me.”