[Washington Times] Sara A. Carter - Pakistan's top Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, is buying children as young as 7 to serve as suicide bombers in the growing spate of attacks against Pakistani, Afghan and U.S. targets, U.S. Defense Department and Pakistani officials say. A Pakistani official said the going price for child bombers was $7,000 to $14,000 - huge sums in Pakistan, where per-capita income is about $2,600 a year. Using child suicide bombers "is the grim reality of the Taliban Frankenstein that now threatens to overwhelm the Pakistani state," said Bruce Riedel, a Brookings Institution scholar who chaired a review of Pakistan-Afghanistan strategy for President Obama.
2009-07-03 06:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive