Taliban fighters carrying machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades used children as human shields during a battle in southern Afghanistan on Wednesday, a tactic that forced US-led coalition soldiers to hold their fire, the coalition said. The fighting in Uruzgan province began when more than 20 insurgents attacked a joint Afghan and coalition patrol Wednesday morning.
As a coalition aircraft prepared to bomb the site, "coalition forces as well as the aircraft identified several insurgents in one compound using children as human shields," a coalition statement said. Ground forces and the aircraft withheld fire to avoid injuring the children, it said.