USA Today: U.S. military officials publicly touted the August 22, 2008, Azizabad raid – Operation Commando Riot – as a victory. A high-value Taliban target had been killed; the collateral damage was minimal; the village was grateful. None of it was true. The Taliban commander escaped. Dozens of civilians were dead in the rubble, including
Ayaz Gul VOA News December 17, 2019 ISLAMABAD – Two separate bomb explosions in Afghanistan Tuesday killed at least 10 civilians, including children, and injured 18 others. The violence comes as a new United Nations report says that even by Afghanistan’s grim standards, 2019 has been particularly deadly for children and described the country as
Tolo News: Logar residents claimed that four children were killed in a mortar attack in Baraki Barak district of the province on Tuesday afternoon. “The mortar attack came from the (foreign forces) camp,” a Logar resident said. “There is no Taliban in that area. The government has checkpoints there.” Click here to read more (external link).
Tolo News: Afghan MPs have approved the Law on Protection of Child Rights–the Child Protection Act–on Monday after years of wrangling over the legal age of boys and girls. Now, according to the law, boys and girls under the age of 18 are considered children. The law will help victims of the illegal practice of Bacha
RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan November 27, 2019 Afghanistan’s main intelligence agency says it has released two activists who helped expose an alleged pedophile ring operating in the country’s schools, a scandal that has sparked national outrage. The National Directorate of Security (NDS) has come under fire for arresting last week the two human rights defenders
Ariana: The National Directorate of Security (NDS), Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, has rejected claims of sexual abuse of boys in Logar schools, saying that seeking asylum was the main reason behind the allegations. In a statement released on Tuesday, NDS said that the claims made by Mohammad Musa Mahmudi, a civil society activist, and his colleagues were
Ayaz Gul VOA News November 25, 2019 ISLAMABAD – An international rights group on Monday demanded authorities in Afghanistan immediately release two local human rights defenders who exposed an alleged pedophile ring involved in the abuse of hundreds of school children. In a statement, Amnesty International accused Afghanistan’s intelligence agency, National Directorate of Security (NDS),
BBC News: On 18 October 2012, a UK Special Forces soldier shot dead four young people in an Afghan village. Their families say three of them were children. It looks like a war crime but nobody has been prosecuted. The soldier who killed the boys had reportedly claimed to detectives that he acted in self-defence. He told
NYT: This time, it was a Soviet cluster bomb, killing 3 boys on a now-peaceful mountain. War after war has left Afghanistan littered with thousands of deadly next times. Accounts of children finding old bombs and accidentally setting them off have become a central part of Afghanistan’s story, horrifying in how frequently it is repeated. Click here
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty November 19, 2019 Almost two-thirds of Afghan children have been impacted by the ongoing conflict in the war-wracked country, the British-based Save the Children charity says. Children affected by the conflict lost a family member, witnessed battles or attacks, or sustained conflict-related injuries, the charity said in a report published on November 19.