US: 200 teens have been detained in Afghan war

NEW YORK (AP) - The US military has detained more than 200 Afghan teenagers who were captured in the war for about a year at a time at a military prison next to Bagram Airfield in Afghanistan, the United States has told the United Nations.

The US State Department characterised the detainees held since 2008 as "enemy combatants" in a report sent every four years to the United Nations in Geneva updating U.S. compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The US military had held them "to prevent a combatant from returning to the battlefield", the report said.

A few are still confined at the Detention Facility in Parwan, which will be turned over to the Afghan government, it said. "Many of them have been released or transferred to the Afghan government," said the report, distributed this week.