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January 29, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Forty newborn babies have died in southeastern Khost province over the past one month, indicating a sharp increase in the infant mortality rate, health officials said on Sunday. The 40 newborns who died had less than a kilo of weight, Public Health Director Dr. Hidayatullah Hamidi told Pajhwok Afghan News during an exclusive interview. Full news...
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January 23, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Seventy percent of children in a district of eastern Nangarhar province have caught various diseases due to exposure to harsh weather conditions, officials and residents said on Monday. Up to 100 centimetres of snow had been recorded so far in the Hesarak district, where roads connecting the town with Jalalabad remained closed, said the district development council head. Full news...
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January 22, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Womensenews: In the summer of 2003, I met a girl in an Afghan town straddling the desert who would become an obsession for me. I knew her for only a few weeks, but those few weeks shaped the next four years of my life in Afghanistan. What I remember most about her is her scared look, a gaze that deepened her otherwise blank green eyes. Full news...
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January 18, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: British military police have arrested two servicemen over allegations that they abused children in Afghanistan, the defence ministry said Wednesday, prompting a furious reaction from Kabul. The Sun newspaper reported that a sergeant and a private from the Mercian Battle Group have been arrested over claims that they abused an Afghan boy and a girl, both aged about 10, and filmed the incidents. Full news...
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January 17, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: It has often been called the polio cease-fire. In a country where insurgents have for years attacked and killed people working for the government or the international community, a small army of vaccination teams connected to both has, year after year, fanned out through some of Afghanistan’s most dangerous areas, quietly and mostly safely. Full news...
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January 13, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Telegraph: The mission was as simple as touching two wires together, the little boy was promised. The resulting blast would obliterate the American infidels – but God would spare him from the flame and shrapnel. Abdul Samat would be unharmed and free to run back to the men who had fitted his bomb vest. Full news...
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January 8, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Three policemen were detained in connection with the abduction of children in central Logar and southeastern Paktia provinces, an official said on Sunday. One policeman in Paktia and two in Logar were arrested on the basis of complaints from residents, the Logar crime branch chief told Pajhwok Afghan News. Full news...
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January 7, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: The Taliban have executed an 18-year-old boy on the accusation of spying for the government in southeastern Paktika province, an official said on Saturday. The victim identified as Sher Khan, was killed by the insurgent a day earlier in the Mohammad Khel village near the provincial capital, Sharan, the governor’s spokesman, Mukhlis Afghan, told Pajhwok Afghan News. Full news...
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January 6, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: Explosives hidden in a trash heap killed six children in southern Afghanistan Friday, police said, and five NATO troops were killed in roadside bombings in the volatile region. The children were rummaging through the trash for food scraps and bottles in the southern province of Uruzgon when the blast killed them, police spokesman Farid Ayal said. Full news...
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January 3, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Juma Khan, a resident of Khwahan district in northeastern Badakhshan province, says the ongoing drought and snowfall have destroyed all of his property, forcing him to hand over his six children to the district chief for survival. Speaking over the telephone, he said the ongoing drought and continued snowfall had badly affected him economically. Full news...
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January 3, 2012 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
It was an early morning in August, 5:50 am to be precise, not the time for children to have fun. But youngsters bold enough to risk it had climbed onto the roofs of their mud houses that dot the hills in Kabul.They were looking at a giant, black cloud rising from the ground not far away. Five minutes ago, a car bomb had exploded and sporadic gunshots ripped through the quiet... Full news...
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December 21, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AAP: Insurgents in Oruzgan Province are under such pressure from coalition forces that some are resorting to using children to assemble and transport improvised explosive devices (IEDs), Australia’s troop commander in Afghanistan says. Lieutenant Colonel Chris Smith, commanding officer of the Mentoring Task Force (MTF-3), said the province was mostly under government control but... Full news...
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November 30, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Deutsche Presse-Agentur: Sherzai was 13 years old when his uncle sold him to Taliban insurgents for 15,000 Pakistani rupees (170 dollars). “Then the Taliban told me to carry out a suicide attack,” he said, now in a juvenile correctional facility in Kabul. “They said I would be a martyr and I would go to paradise.” Full news...
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November 24, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
BBC: Seven civilians, including six children, have been killed in a Nato air strike in southern Afghanistan, local officials say. District Governor Niaz Mohammad Sarhadi told the BBC the civilians died late on Wednesday in the Zheray district of Kandahar province. He said the strike had been launched in a remote area after Taliban insurgents were seen planting roadside bombs. Full news...
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November 24, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
RFE/RL: Thousands of children roam the dusty streets and grimy alleyways of Afghanistan, working to earn desperately needed money for their families. The sight of shabbily-dressed children, sometimes as young as three years old, is a common one around the military bases and shopping areas where they ply their trades under the blazing sun of summer or the biting cold of winter. Full news...
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November 6, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The San Francisco Chronicle: Hardly anyone noticed, but the Afghan government cut the budget for the state’s Independent Human Rights Commission by half this year, evidencing “the government’s lack of interest and political will in the promotion of human rights,” the commission said. Nowhere on Earth is the work of a human rights commission more important than in Afghanistan. Why is that? Full news...
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October 28, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: Despite billions in international aid, Afghanistan remains one of the poorest nations in the world. Its high infant mortality rate is evidence that life remains hard for the Afghan people from the moment of birth. The infant mortality rate is considered an important indicator of a country’s level of health or development. Full news...
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October 27, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Both legs of a child were blown off by a Taliban-planted roadside bomb in southern Kandahar province, where a joint Afghan-foreign force detained two suspected insurgents, an official said on Thursday. On his way home, the child he stepped on the bomb in the Khakrez district late on Wednesday, the governor’s spokesman said. Full news...
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October 21, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: With almost 76 percent of schools across Daikundi province having proper buildings, more than 100,000 students are still studying under tents, officials said on Friday. A total of 334 schools are operating in the province, Director of Education Sardar Ali Jafri told Pajhwok Afghan News. As many as 118,104 students are taught under trees, in mosques and rented houses. Full news...
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October 18, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
CNN International: From dusk until dawn, 12-year-old Fayaz toils at his uncle’s blacksmith shop in Kabul. While other kids his age are in school, he’s swinging a heavy sledgehammer and doing physically exhausting work that he knows is not meant for a boy. But he doesn't have much choice. It has been that way since he was 7, when his father got sick. Full news...
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October 16, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Suspected militants stormed two girls’ schools in the Batikot district of eastern Nangarhar province, destroying one and partially damaging the other, officials said on Sunday. The schools were set on fire in Chahardi and Barikab areas late on Saturday night, district chief, Israrullah Qarizada, told Pajhwok Afghan News. Full news...
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October 15, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: In the relentless heat of a summer’s day in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif, most people are trying to find some shade, but 11-year-old Mohammad Rafiq is walking the streets carrying a box full of shoe-shining equipment. Dripping with sweat, the boy asks passers-by, “Uncle, may I polish your shoes?” Full news...
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October 10, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Stop the War Coalition: Afghanistan has been engaged with more than 30 years of war with thousands of civilians killed or injured since 2001. It is under these conditions that children are at extreme risk of violence, abuse, exploitation and neglect. The children of Afghanistan are growing up in one of the least developed countries in the world. Six percent of babies die at birth and 25 percent before their 5th birthday. Full news...
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September 19, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
RFE/RL: Human rights officials in Afghanistan have endorsed earlier findings suggesting that endemic violence is inflicting considerable psychological trauma and distress on children in that country, RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan reports.Afghanistan’s Independent Human Rights Commission in Kabul told RFE/RL that many Afghan children have witnessed acts of violence... Full news...
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August 27, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Xinhua: Likewise other war-torn countries, the poverty and child labor are common in the war-battered Afghanistan; however, using children as the lethal suicide bombers is a new unimaginable phenomenon that tramples the right of teens in this part of the world. Virtually, in the modern world it is hard to believe that youngsters can be recruited and used as human bombs against humanity... Full news...
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August 18, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
BBC News: At least 22 people have been killed and many wounded when a roadside bomb hit a crowded minibus in the Afghan province of Herat, officials say. Officials said the bus was full and women and children were among the casualties. It was travelling from Obe district to the provincial capital, which recently passed to the control of Afghan forces. Full news...
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August 16, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Frontier Post: A clash between Taliban and foreign forces and a rocket attack left 16 civilians wounded last night in eastern Kunar province, officials said Tuesday. Taliban attacked a base of combined force in Ghondi village of Narang district, sparking a clash, Said Fazlullah Wahidi, governor of Kunar province, told Afghan Islamic Press (AIP). He said 12 civilians were wounded in exchange of fire. Full news...
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August 15, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
VOA: As the tides of war turn against them in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as government and ISAF forces drive deep into territory they once controlled, the Taliban are increasingly targeting children as both victims and weapons of war. The Taliban, never great proponents of education, have a long history of attacking schools and students, particularly girls. Full news...
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August 6, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: Afghan civilians may have been caught up in a NATO air strike against suspected Taliban insurgents, a foreign military spokesman said Saturday, amid claims up to eight civilians died. A local official said that an imam, his wife and their six children were killed by an air strike in Nad Ali district in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province Friday. Full news...
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July 28, 2011 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IWPR: Afghan education officials have promised to take action after members of the small Hindu and Sikh communities said their children were being forced to drop out of state schools because of bullying. Opinion is divided, however, on whether separate minority schools are the best way forward. “When our children go to the government schools, they face problems,” Ravinder Singh, a Sikh community leader in the capital Kabul, said. Full news...