KABUL: Afghan President Hamid Karzai met a group of would-be child suicide bombers aged as young as seven Wednesday and ordered their release on compassionate grounds.

The 20 or so youngsters were recruited individually by the Taliban, often at religious schools, and promised virgins in paradise after they blew themselves up, a statement from the presidential palace said.

However, all of the group were either arrested or surrendered to security forces before they could strike.

Afghan officials accuse the Taliban, who are leading a ten-year insurgency against Karzai's government and foreign forces, of using an increasing number of children in suicide attacks, which frequently kill civilians.

This is because they are easily recruited and difficult to detect. The Taliban denies it but are known to distort public statements.

During the meeting with Karzai, the young boys told of why they agreed to become suicide bombers.

“Go and carry out a suicide attack, you will go to paradise, there will be virgins, scholars, our prophet,” 17-year-old Yasin said he was told by the Taliban while a student in a Pakistani religious school.

“Then they told me 'you are sick' and gave me an injection which made me feel different,” he added.

The Taliban frequently give would-be suicide bombers drugs in order to embolden them to carry out their attacks, Afghan officials say.

Another of the boys, 12-year-old Gul Khan, said he was told by the Taliban that he would not die if he carried out an attack on foreigners.

“They told me: 'As you approach the foreigners, touch these two wires together. The bomb shrapnel will kill the foreigners but you will survive,'” he said, according to the presidential press office statement.

Condemning the use of children in suicide attacks, Karzai called it “cruelty against Islam and against the children of Afghanistan.”