Taliban Used Children as Human Shields

KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban fighters carrying machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades used children as human shields during a battle in southern Afghanistan yesterday, forcing American-led coalition soldiers to hold their fire for a time, the coalition said.

The clash in Uruzgan province began when more than 20 insurgents attacked a joint Afghan and coalition patrol, the coalition said in a statement. As aircraft prepared to bomb the site, "coalition forces as well as the aircraft identified several insurgents in one compound using children as human shields," the statement said. Ground troops and the aircraft withheld fire to avoid injuring the children, it said.

The soldiers did fight the insurgents when they tried to flee the compound, and more than a dozen suspected militants were killed, the coalition said. The report, which was impossible to verify independently, did not list any casualties among troops or civilians. Major Chris Belcher, a coalition spokesman, said Taliban fighters have used children as shields before. In June, insurgents forced women and children into a canal in Uruzgan while battling coalition forces, and many of the human shields died in the crossfire, he said.