July 19, 2008	Saturday	Rajab 15, 1429

GHAZNI, July 18: Police arrested a woman and a 13-year-old child they alleged were suicide bombers planning to kill a provincial governor in central Afghanistan, officials claimed on Friday.

The two were arrested on Thursday night as they were allegedly fixing explosives to themselves behind the governor’s residence in Ghazni, provincial government spokesman Ismail Jahangir told AFP.

“They both were attempting to get into governors’ compound and target the governor and high-ranking officials,” Jahangir claimed.

It is rare that women carry out attacks in Afghanistan. But a suicide attack in May in southwestern Farah province was apparently carried out by a woman in a burqa.

Jahangir claimed the woman and the child could not speak either of Afghanistan’s main languages, Dari and Pashto, but spoke Urdu and Arabic.

They were presented to the media several hours after their arrest.

The deputy police chief of Ghazni, Abdul Ghani, told reporters the woman had confessed she was from Multan and had come to the city to carry out a suicide attack.—AFP