PAN: The family of a 10 year old child who was sexually abused by his neighbor in Sarobi district of Kabul province demanded justice from the government. He said Perviz, 10 was molested by a son of former Jehadi commander Muhammad Dad, 22. He said: "Parviz, a mentally retard child was playing outside the house and son of Muhammad Dad took him to an empty yard and molested him".      Full news...

Reuters: The father of a seven-day-old boy said on Thursday his infant son died in an overnight raid by Afghan and U.S. forces, with the U.S. saying it was investigating the claim. A female school teacher was also killed and the child's mother wounded, the father said, during the raid in Ali Daya village in Khost province, where Taliban fighters are active      Full news...

IRIN: Despite a July 2008 joint emergency appeal for US$404 million to help the most vulnerable 550,000 pregnant and lactating women and under-five children in Afghanistan, nutritious food aid - specially fortified food -is yet to reach those in need. Some 24 percent of lactating women are malnourished, over 19 percent of pregnant women have a poor nutritional status (low on minerals, vitamins, food insecure and weak) and about 54 percent of under-five children are stunted, according to a joint survey by UN agencies and the government.      Full news...

IRIN: The more than 1,000 children deported from Iran to Afghanistan’s western province of Herat in 2008 face poverty and are at risk of abuse, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Most of the deported teenagers were working as economic migrants in the neighbouring oil-rich country where they are considered “illegal intruders” and qualify for forced expulsion. provincial authorities.      Full news...

CNN: The United Nations says that more than $15 billion in aid has been sent to Afghanistan since the U.S.-led coalition overthrew the Taliban in late 2001. But still, the hospital cannot afford to help the hundreds of children who stream in every day, desperate for care and cures. The government does pay for salaries and sometimes for fuel, but there is often a shortage of even basic supplies like syringes.      Full news...

PAN: Expressing its deep concern, Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) has said that 80 percent of children in western Ghor province have been forced into labor due to poverty. The human rights official described the child labor a stigma in the society and stressed the need for improving the situation and provision of education opportunities to the children.      Full news...

Frontline: “Nothing has changed for us in this new Afghanistan,” said 16-year-old Seema, in early 2007, whose father was killed by a U.S. “liberating” bomb in October 2001. IN a widely quoted recent interview (on the National Public Radio network), Sarah Chayes proclaims, “Taliban Terrorising Afghanistan”. Afghanistan’s problems, Sarah Chayes implies that Afghanistan’s troubles call for military solutions.4 Give birth to “human rights” and electoral democracy with U.S. precision bombs and Special Forces.      Full news...

SBS: Dateline speaks with an Afghan family who claim to have witnessed several children being killed when Australian troops stormed their home in Oruzgan Province. Out of at least six people killed in the battle, five were children. We bring you an exclusive interview with the family of those children, who claim it happened without warning or provocation. This is how Australia first learnt that five children had been killed by ADF soldiers serving in Afghanistan.      Full news...

RIA Novosti: Hundreds of Afghans in the southern city of Kandahar protested the deaths of two boys, believed to have been killed by a Canadian rocket. Some media sources reported the children were killed when a missile hit a house in the Panjwai village. Five other people were injured. However Canadian media reported that the children may have died when an unexploded bomb detonated as they searched for scrap metal in the Panjwai valley. A local police chief said the deaths may have been caused by a Taliban attack.      Full news...

PAN: Residents of northeastern Badakhshan province said that two pregnant women and five children were died due to lack of facilities in the provincial hospitals. Abdul Azim, a resident of Raghistan district said that he transferred his wife to Yawan district hospital in three days, but there was also no gynecologist.      Full news...

RAWA News: If Afghan victims of American or NATO forces get mentioned at all in the mainstream press, it is the dead. Those permanently maimed in “precision” air strikes or midnight assaults by U.S. Special Forces hardly ever are worthy of notice. Yet, such attacks result in injured as well as wounded; indeed, the ratio of wounded to civilians killed in the predominant air attacks in Afghanistan during the initial U.S. bombing campaign was about 1.8 to 1. This ratio has likely decreased as the fighting became more lethally focused, but a decreasing ratio raises the specter of war crimes having been committed against civilians.      Full news...

Focus Information Agency: The document, prepared by the Pentagon on behalf of the US-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) in Afghanistan and seen by The Independent, also reveal how swathes of the country have slipped out of the control of President Hamid Karzai’s government. According to a poll taken towards the end of last year, a third of the population stated that the Taliban had more influence in their locality. he growing unpopularity of Mr Karzai, along with accusations of corruption against figures associated with his government, has led the new US administration to repeatedly warn the Afghan President he will lose Washington’s support in the coming national elections unless there are drastic changes.      Full news...

Amnesty International: Tens of thousands of Afghans displaced from their homes by escalating fighting and ongoing food shortages require immediate humanitarian assistance. Around 235,000 people are currently displaced in Afghanistan, according to estimates by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). Most are displaced as a result of the fighting between government forces (and allied US and NATO troops) and armed opposition groups including the Taliban, particularly in the South, Southeast and Northwest regions of the country.      Full news...

IWPR: US forces in Afghanistan claim to have killed up to 15 militants associated with an infamous warlord in Herat province in an airstrike, but district officials and eyewitnesses say that the dead were a family of Kuchis, or nomads, who were camped out nearby. Ghulam Mahboob Afzalzada, district governor of Gozara, insisted the strike had claimed the lives of Kuchis, a nomadic people who shepherd their animals throughout the country. Eyewitness say six women, five men, and four children in the village of Karez Sultan were killed in the strike. Several hundred animals are also said to have been killed there.      Full news...

Reuters: Afghanistan condemned on Friday the killing of civilians in a raid by Australian soldiers in the south of the country which it says was not coordinated with Afghan forces. The Australian Defence Force said five children had been killed in a shootout between Taliban insurgents and Australian Special Forces in southern Uruzgan province on Thursday, where they were "clearing" a number of compounds.      Full news...

IRIN: In Afghanistan, particularly in poor rural communities, child slavery and debt bondage practices are growing, but are often disguised as marriage, labour or family affairs not requiring state intervention. Haleem, aged nine, is a full-time servant for US$60 a month at Abdul Malik Khan's house in Zherok District, Paktika Province, southeastern Afghanistan. His tasks range from cleaning, washing, serving tea and baby-sitting to night patrols and gate-keeping.      Full news...

RAWA News: Much official ado has been made in Washington D.C. and in the U.S. corporate press about how the new Administration will be taking far greater care as regards Afghan civilians. Data analyzed below for January 2009 suggests that the deadliness of the Afghan war for civilians under the Obama clock significantly exceeds that registered under the outgoing Bush regime. Boys, women, girls, tribal leaders all have perished at the hands of the foreign occupiers.      Full news...

SOS Children's Villages: Every day, as they go to school, girls in Afghanistan run a gauntlet of intimidation and harassment by youths carrying knives. From acid attacks, murder, torching of schools and sexual assault, violence against girl students is crushing the dreams of thousands of Afghan girls and women hungry to learn. In spite of the police presence near every school boys manage to tease girls and even kidnap them and sexually abuse them. In the past eight months, 138 students and teachers have died and 172 have been wounded in criminal and terror attacks, according to the Ministry of Education. About 651 schools have closed and another 122 school buildings have been blown up or burned down.      Full news...

Wikinews: January 15, a United States military strike in the Afghan province of Laghman killed 15 people, according to U.S. officials. The U.S claims only militants were killed, but on Saturday, village elders disputed that claim with the allegation that the casualties were all civilians. However, this version of events was contested when a statement from the Afghani president's office declared that 16 civilians were killed, not 15 militants. That statement also claimed that two women and three children were among the dead.      Full news...

AFP: The United Nations said Monday that Afghanistan needs to more than double its midwife numbers to curb one of the world's highest maternal mortality rates despite a huge increase in practitioners. "In 2002 there were only 467 trained midwives in the entire country," World Health Organisation country representative Peter Graaff told a news conference. That number had increased to more than 2,100 by 2008, he said. But in a stark assessment of Afghanistan's needs, he said: "The total estimated requirement for midwives in the country is not 2,100 but 4,500... in order to cover the needs of 90 percent of the population."      Full news...

The New York Times: The outrage over civilian deaths swelled again over the weekend. Hundreds of angry villagers demonstrated here in Mehtarlam, the capital of Laghman Province, on Sunday after an American raid on a village in the province on Friday night. The raid killed at least 16 villagers, including 2 women and 3 children, according to a statement from President Hamid Karzai. They agreed that 13 civilians had been killed and 9 wounded when American commandos broke down doors and unleashed dogs without warning on Jan. 7 in the hunt for a known insurgent in Masamut, in Laghman Province in eastern Afghanistan. The residents were so enraged that they threatened to march on the American military base here.      Full news...

South Asia News: US-led forces claimed Saturday they killed 15 rebels, including a female fighter, in eastern Afghanistan. However, a provincial lawmaker and local villagers said that 21 Afghan civilians were killed in the operation. Eleven militants were killed in the firefight, while four others were killed in an airstrike, it said, adding that a female fighter was killed 'while maneuvering on coalition forces and was carrying a rocket-propelled grenade.' However, Abdul Rahimzai, head of Laghman's provincial council, said that Friday night's attack killed 21 civilians and wounded several others.      Full news...

PAN: Four people were arrested in a rape case of a young girl in Baharak district of northeastern Badakhshan province, police said. Colonel Abdul Wadood, Baharak district chief told PAN on Sunday that these four men brought 14 year old Aziza to a house, raped her and later the girl was recovered from a barn. He said that two of the rapists were Badakhshan border police officials and the case has been submitted to the prosecution.      Full news...

The Earth Times: Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Thursday condemned the reported killing of 17 civilians, including women and children, in a US-led coalition operation in eastern Afghanistan, the presidential palace said in a statement. Several demonstration have been staged in Afghan cities and rural areas to condemn the killing of civilians by foreign forces. Unable to seek revenge independently, many Afghan men in southern and eastern Afghanistan have joined the Taliban ranks after losing members of their families in international military operations, according to Afghan officials.      Full news...

PAN: Locals of Sangin district of southern Helmand province Tuesday warned that majority of the residents were compelled to flee the area due to the airstrikes carried out by NATO-led ISAF forces without even informing the local security forces. Locals claimed that over 17 civilians most of them elders and children had been killed by ISAF soldiers during the last fortnight. The locals also criticized the irresponsible strikes of ISAF soldiers in a gathering participated by governor.      Full news...

Quqnoos: This year 173000 students could not go to schools, says Ministry of Education. The number of teachers and students killed in the past 10 months has nearly doubled the total casualties of last year, authorities in the ministry of education said. This year 651 schools were closed in southern provinces; 141 teachers and students were killed since beginning of the year; and 173000 students dropped off schools, spokesman for ministry of education said.      Full news...

IRIN: Azizullah's family left their home in the Sangin District of Helmand Province, southern Afghanistan, because of the worsening conflict, drought and food security situation. Their new home is a one-room mud-hut in the western outskirts of Kabul where over 4,500 internally displaced persons (IDPs) have established a makeshift camp. "We abandoned our home because of aerial strikes [by international forces] and brutalities by the Taliban," Azizullah told IRIN as his six bare-foot children huddled around him on a cold afternoon on 28 December.      Full news...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): A 12-year old boy in Faryab province was raped. General Mohammad Sadiq, commander of the Commanding Security of Faryab, told PAN that the boy was named Farhad and had been kidnapped a day back. Two men in a Corolla car had kidnapped him from the city of Maimana to the Shireen Tugab District and raped him there. He added that after that the rapists had intoxicated him and freed him from a Corolla car in the Friday Bazaar in Maimanah (capital city of Faryab) and escaped from there.      Full news...

Tolo TV (Translated by RAWA): Rape victims demand severe punishments for the people involved in the crime. Two girls, thirteen and twelve years old, were gang-raped by powerful men and regional commanders in Sar-e-Pul about four months back. They say that till now no measures have been taken against the people who had raped them. They demanded justice from the government and legal and judicial bodies. Increasing cases of rape, especially those of children, have greatly worried people in the country. Human rights organizations have also expressed concern over the terrible aftermath of the rapes.      Full news...

AFP: Fourteen children were among 20 Afghans killed in new extremist attacks in insurgency-hit Afghanistan that also left two Canadian soldiers dead, security officials said Sunday. The children and two adults died in a powerful suicide car bombing in the eastern province of Khost, said the NATO-led force, which has troops across the country to fight the insurgents. "In the process he killed 16 Afghans and wounded 58 others," NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement.      Full news...