KABUL, Afghanistan — The Afghan government declared Wasil Ahmad a hero for leading a militia’s defense against a Taliban siege last year, parading him in front of cameras in a borrowed police uniform too big for him. On Monday, the Taliban triumphantly announced that they had assassinated him with two bullets to the head.

Wasil Ahmad was 10 years old.

He was gunned down in Tirin Kot city, the capital of southern Oruzgan Province, just a few months after leaving militia life and enrolling in school as a fourth grader.

Wasil’s story is a painful example of how child combatants continue to be a part of life in Afghanistan, both in the ranks of pro-government forces and among the Taliban insurgents.

Rafiullah Baidar, a spokesman for the Afghan independent human rights commission, said that despite strict orders from President Ashraf Ghani last year against using children in the military, his commission continues to receive reports of child soldiers in the Afghan forces, particularly in the Afghan Local Police militias. The Taliban, he said, used child soldiers, too, in recent fighting in places like Kunduz and Badakhshan, in the northern part of the country.