The French army has admitted killing four children with a missile strike in a Taliban-controlled area of Afghanistan.
"This happened on April 6, but it only came out today because, according to French military spokesman, it took that long to carry out the investigation," Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel Hamid, reporting from Kabul, said on Thursday.
The children died when French soldiers fired a missile from a military base in Kapisa province after it came under attack from the Taliban.
"They say that they held their positions for about an hour to figure out where the fire was coming from, before they were ordered to launch a tele-guided Milan missile which is quite precise," Abdel Hamid said.
PHOTO CAPTION
French soldiers patrol in Showal town in the Nad-e-Ali district in Helmand province, February 2010.
Al-Jazeera