By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS - NPR
Added: Mon, 20 Jun 2011 21:11:55 UTC

Sohana Jawed, left, a nine year old Pakistani girl sits with police chief Salim Marwat during a news conference in Lower Dir in Timergarah, Pakistan on Monday, June 20, 2011. A 9-year-old girl who was kidnapped on her way to school and forced to wear a suicide vest managed to escape her captors Monday as they directed her to attack a paramilitary checkpoint in northwest Pakistan.

Police said Monday that militants kidnapped a 9-year-old girl on her way to school and forced her to wear a suicide bomb vest. The girl and police said she managed to escape her captors as they directed her to attack a paramilitary checkpoint in northwest Pakistan.

Sohana Jawed, who is in third grade, said she was abducted near her home in the northwestern city of Peshawar on Saturday and taken to Lower Dir district, a four hours' drive away, where she was found Monday.

Police in Lower Dir presented Jawed at a news conference, where she told her story dressed in her blue and white school uniform. But police in Peshawar said they haven't received a complaint of a missing girl and haven't identified a resident with her name.

Initial police reports of security incidents in Pakistan are sometimes wrong.

Militants in the country have often used young boys to carry out attacks, but the use of young girls is rare.

Jawed said during the news conference that she was grabbed by two women while on her way to school and forced into a car carrying two men.
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TAGGED: ABUSE, CHILDREN, TERRORISM