AFP: Afghan children are being recruited as suicide bombers, drawn into the military and used for sex by armed groups, a senior official with the UN children's agency said on Sunday. But the conflict means that children in more than 60% of the country cannot not be reached by Unicef workers, the agency's deputy executive director Hilde F Johnson said on a visit to Kabul.      more...

BBC: Although millions of Afghan children have gone back to school since the fall of the Taliban, full time education remains a distant dream for many. Continuing poverty means many children, including some as young as six, are forced to work to help their families. Twelve-year-old Izatullah was pushing a cart containing heavy sacks of flour. "I take this load to another shopkeeper. They will give me 10 or 20 Afghanis (21 pence or 42pence). I am poor, I don't have bread. My father is an old man. I earn our living," he said.      more...

Quqnoos: Child abuse has tripled in Afghanistan’s northern provinces, the head of the human rights commission in the north, Said Muhammad Sami, said. He said the sexual abuse of, and violence against, children had increased threefold in four of the north’s provinces.      more...

Independent.co.uk: There is a little girl in the Meir Wais hospital with livid scars and dead skin across her face, an obscene map of brown and pink tissue. Then there is another girl, a beautiful child, Khorea Horay, grimacing in pain, her leg amputated, her life destroyed after her foot was torn to pieces. In another ward, two girls lie on their backs, a tent above their limbs. One has lost an arm, another – a 16-year-old – a leg. The black turbans are everywhere. So are the blue burkhas which we Westerners confidently – stupidly – believed would vanish from Afghan society.      more...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): In the common border of Torkham between Pakistan and Afghanistan about 4000 children engage in harsh work everyday. Besides being beaten by the border patrols of Pakistan they are also imprisoned. Rana, a 12-year old girl belonging to the Sarkhrud District of Ningarhar province, told PAN on 20 November that her father has Hepatitis and she is forced to work in Torkham. She added that everyday she has to bring a small bag of flour from the other side of the border to earn 10 rupees.      more...

PAN: Unknown armed men kidnapped three students of two high schools students in Baraki Barak district of Logar province, on Wednesday. Deputy Director of Logar province, Mohammad Yasin Ahmadi told Pajhwok Afghan News that the students of two different high schools in the district were residents of Chalozai village.      more...

PAN: Convoy of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) run over a ten-years-old girl in northern Afghanistan. The minor girl received injuries in the mishap but succumbed to her injuries later in the hospital, he worried. The dead body of the girl was handed over to her family, he added.      more...

Spiegel Online: It's all too often that the US military accepts civilian casualties as a necessary evil. An internal Air Force report describes its excessively violent methods as well as how officials have been trying to placate surviving family members with money. There have been times when artillary shells have killed innocent civilians after landing several kilometers off-target. That is what happened in Paktika Province in the country's southeast on July 19. In other instances, such as that of last Monday -- as well as on July 6 and other previous occasions -- wedding parties have been misidentified as groups of insurgents -- with deadly consequences.      more...

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty: Afghan education authorities say they are facing a difficult task of convincing parents to send their daughters to school as attacks on female students have increased in recent months. Three girls sustained severe burns in the southern town of Kandahar earlier in the week when unknown men sprayed acid on up to 15 girls. One of the girls might permanently lose her sight.      more...

CNN: Little Banafsha wakes up in her small mud home, has a cup of tea and braces herself for the day ahead. She is just 11 years old, but she is the breadwinner for her family. Literally. Without the bread that she begs from strangers, she, her sisters, her baby brothers and her mom would all go hungry.      more...

Los Angeles Times: The U.S. military acknowledged Saturday that 37 civilians were killed and 35 injured during fighting last week in Kandahar province between insurgents and coalition forces. The finding came just three days after provincial officials and the Afghan president's office asserted that three dozen people had died in an errant U.S. airstrike on a wedding party in a village outside the city of Kandahar.      more...

CNN News: The U.S. military is investigating two airstrikes this week that Afghan officials say killed as many as 60 civilians. Many Afghans accuse the United States of not taking caution when carrying out airstrikes in civilian areas and Karzai has been under enormous political pressure to stop the strikes.      more...

ATN (Translated by RAWA): A 7-year old girl was raped by a young man in Ghazni province of Afghanistan. The girl is currently under treatment in the provincial hospital of Ghazni. Doctors in the hospital say that her condition is better now.      more...

Xinhua: As many as 37 civilians have been killed in an airstrike of U.S.-led troops in southern Afghanistan while attending a wedding party, local Afghan villagers said Wednesday. Haji Roozi Khan, owner of the mentioned house, told Xinhua on the spot that the air bombing and firing meant to retaliate on militants who hit the wedding gathering, killing 10 women, 23 children, and four men, all civilians.      more...

IRIN: There are at least 200,000 children in Afghanistan living with permanent disability (physical, sensory and/or mental impairment), according to a 2005 survey by Handicap International - a non-governmental organisation supporting people with disability. Three decades of conflict have left the country strewn with landmines and other explosive remnants of war which kill and/or maim about 60 people, mostly children, each month, the International Committee of the Red Cross has reported.      more...

Times Online: A Nato airstrike in Helmand this afternoon may have killed as many as 18 women and children, according to local officials in the province. Angry local people brought the bodies of at least six women and children, some of them badly disfigured, to the provincial capital Lashkargar and placed the bodies outside the house of the provincial governor, according to witnesses who spoke to The Times in Lashkargar.      more...

TrendNews: The six-year-old, Samiullah, a resident of the provincial capital Aibak was raped by 18-year-old Muhammad Ullah on Friday after the teenager lured Samiullah into his garden with offerings of fruit, the head of the province’s criminal branch, Habib-ul-Rahman Saighani, said.      more...

BBC Persian (Translated by RAWA): The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) says that human rights violation cases in the country have increased by two times as compared to last year. Continuation of the mafia culture in Afghanistan and “lack of concern” in the prosecution of the criminals are the main causes of increase in cases of human rights violation. Lack of security in Afghanistan was another cause of the continuation of human rights violation in the country.      more...

IRIN: Population growth and the construction boom in Kabul over the past few years have resulted in the daily production of over 3,000 tonnes (109,500 tonnes annually) of solid waste. Some of this has been accumulating, causing serious health and environmental damage, according to Kabul Municipality. Medical doctors at Kabul’s Indira Gandhi Child Hospital (IGCH) said many children had picked up diarrhoea, dysentery or cholera from contaminated water. “Unsafe drinking water causes almost half of the diseases among children,” said Khalilullah Hodkhil, head of the IGCH.      more...

BBC Persian (Translated by RAWA): The police of Kabul say that they have arrested seven people for having raped a 12-year old girl in the city. The command police of Kabul said that the matter of the rape of the girl had been reported to them two days earlier and the girl had claimed that she had been raped by twelve men.      more...

BBC Persian (Translated by RAWA): A family in Qunduz province in North Afghanistan has claimed that four people had raped their 12-year old daughter. This girl who herself was present in the binoculars of the press told reporters that first she had been kidnapped on the way from her home to the city and kept in an unknown place for a night. This 12-year old also said that four men had raped her.      more...

IRIN: More than 600 primary, secondary and high schools are closed, mostly in the volatile southern provinces, because of prevalent insecurity and attacks on formal education, the MoE said. Consequently, more than 300,000 students have been deprived of an education in 12 provinces, according to MoE officials.      more...

Online: Forty per cent of the civilian victims of recent military operations and fighting in Afghanistan are children and women, a local child protection agency said. The Afghan Children Protection Organization (ACPO) said in a statement that among 700 civilians killed in the past six months in conflict, 40 per cent were children and women.      more...

IOM: Trafficking in persons is a crime that can impair a personality and even destroy a human life and it gravely affects today’s Afghanistan as a source, transit and destination country. The traffickers ruthlessly exploit men, women and children by violating their basic human rights and this modern-day form of slavery continues to thrive with impunity.      more...

Reuters: Relatives of Afghans killed in a US-led coalition raid in western Herat province have offered to dig up graves to support claims of large-scale civilian deaths. The Aug. 22 air strike in Shindand district has outraged Afghans and opened a rift between coalition forces on the one hand and the Afghan government and the UN on the other, which both say that more than 90 civilians were killed.      more...

Global Research: It is difficult to find out what is really going on in Afghanistan. The focus of the mass media is almost entirely on the military activities of the Canadian and NATO forces. There is absolutely no coverage of political developments. The news on the economy is limited to the state of the poppy industry. This is no accident. The North American media, including the CBC, has strongly supported the U.S./NATO strategy and the administration of President Hamid Karzai. Contrary to the mainstream message, things are not going well.      more...

The Associated Press: The bodies of at least 10 children and many more adults covered in blankets and white shrouds appear in videos obtained by The Associated Press on Monday, lending weight to Afghan and U.N. allegations that US-led raid last month killed more civilians than the US reported. The sounds of wailing women mixed with the voices of men shouting inside a white-walled mosque in the western village of Azizabad, where an Afghan government commission and U.N. report said some 90 civilians -including 60 children and 15 women- were killed.      more...

AKI: Seven people, including several children, were killed on Friday in a NATO airstrike in the western Afghan province of Farah on the border of Iran.      more...

NBC: "I thought American forces were in Afghanistan for our security," said Attiqullah, his voice trembling. "I could never have imagined that they would bomb my wedding party. They killed my entire family. I will never forgive them." An investigation by the Afghan government concluded that 52 people died in that air attack - 45 women and children were killed.      more...

Xinhua: Hundreds of citizens in Afghan capital Kabul rushed into streets and burnt tires on the Kabul-Jalalabad highway on Monday protesting against the death of a Kabuli family caused by the raid of U.S.-led Coalition forces.      more...

RAWA News: The U.S. bombs struck a large gathering of people who had congregated in Azizabad to honor a local leader who had died months earlier. A resident, Fatima, 25, explained from her hospital bed in Herat, where she wept and cursed those who carried out the air strike. “We were holding a memorial service in our home,” she said, tears running down her face. “Suddenly the infidels attacked and I lost consciousness. When I came to, I was in hospital, and they told me that all of my family were dead and already buried. Was my two-year-old child a terrorist? Then am I not also a terrorist? Why did they let me live?”      more...

DailyMirror.lk: Imagine what would happen if a terrorist kills 95 US citizens or citizens of any of the Nato countries. Such a massacre would have dominated the headlines for weeks, if not months. Giving a melodramatic touch, the western media would also carry photographs of the dead children, interviews with their neighbours, friends and teachers and statements of grieving parents and political leaders. But 60 Afghan children who died in the US attack had none of it. No speaker addressing the ongoing Democratic Party convention, dared to mention the Afghan civilian massacre, though they talked about US troops serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.      more...

IRIN: After Sierra Leone, Afghanistan has the worst maternal mortality rate in the world with 1,600 deaths for every 100,000 live births (at least 24,000 deaths annually), according to the UN Population Fund (UNFPA). Badakhshan has the worst infant and maternal mortality rates in the country.      more...

New York Times: President Hamid Karzai strongly condemned on Saturday a coalition airstrike that he said killed up to 95 Afghans — including 50 children — in a village in western Afghanistan on Friday, and said his government would be announcing measures to prevent the loss of civilian life in the future.      more...

Telegraph.co.uk: US-led coalition forces killed 76 civilians - including 50 women and 19 children - in a military operation yesterday, the Afghan government said. The attack, which included air strikes, took place in the Shindand district of Herat province in the west of Afghanistan and an investigation is now underway, its interior ministry said in a statement.      more...

The Independent: Two-thirds of the women in Lashkar Gah's medieval-looking jail have been convicted of illegal sexual relations, but most are simply rape victims – mirroring the situation nationwide. The system does not distinguish between those who have been attacked and those who have chosen to run off with a man.      more...

Reuters: British troops accidentally killed four civilians and wounded three others with rockets during an operation against Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan, NATO and British officials said Sunday.      more...

Quqnoos: The men jailed for raping and killing a seven-year-old girl in the northern province of Takhar were let out of prison early because of police corruption, the murder victim's family have said.      more...

AP via MSNBC: Rape — a crime long hidden in Afghanistan by victims fearing a life of scorn — is getting a public airing in this conservative Islamic country. In recent weeks, several outraged families have appeared on nightly news shows, demanding justice while sharing heartbreaking stories of sexual assaults on teenage daughters.      more...

CNN: The young Afghan girl sits in the center of the room, weeping. Using her hand and her blue scarf to hide her face, she recounts how she was brutally raped by five gunmen. The girl's tragic case is one of many in war-torn Afghanistan, activists say. "This is just an example among thousands of other cases," Shaima, a member of RAWA, tells CNN. "The rest go unnoticed by the media."      more...