A young Afghan girl was caught wearing a suicide vest by border police in southern Helmand province on Sunday.

Interior ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqi told the BBC she was detained as she tried to carry out an attack on the police when one of them spotted her wearing the vest.

She either did not know how to detonate the device or she was arrested before she could carry out the attack, according to the BBC.

The girl told officers that her brother Zahir, a Taliban commander, had given her the vest and sent her towards a police checkpoint in the Khan Nasheen district of Helmand, reports NBC News.

"She was crying and told border police that she was obliged by her brother to do [a] suicide attack on them," Hamidullah Siddiqi, an Afghan border police official, told the network, adding that the girl is believed to be nine or 10 years old.

The girl has now reportedly been transferred to the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah while officials investigate the case and search for her brother.

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