Xinhua: Nearly 100 girl students and teachers of a school in Kapisa province, 80 km north of the Afghan capital Kabul, mysteriously fell unconscious on Tuesday, spokesman of Public Health Ministry Ahmad Farid Rahed said. "A possible poisonous gas attack in Qazak Girl School this morning in Kohistan district has sickened 90 students and seven teachers," Rahed told Xinhua.      Full news...

Human Rights Watch: NATO forces in Afghanistan should immediately release the results of their investigation into a March 14, 2009, incident in which an 8-year-old girl in Kapisa province was burned by white phosphorus munitions, Human Rights Watch said today. A NATO spokesperson has denied allegations from the girl's father that NATO forces had fired the rounds that caused her injuries.      Full news...

The Independent: Of course there will be an inquiry. And in the meantime, we shall be told that all the dead Afghan civilians were being used as "human shields" by the Taliban and we shall say that we "deeply regret" innocent lives that were lost. But we shall say that it's all the fault of the terrorists, not our heroic pilots and the US Marine special forces who were target spotting around Bala Baluk and Ganjabad.      Full news...

PAN: Residents of the Bala Boluk district in western Farah province on Tuesday claimed more than one hundred 'innocent people' have been killed in the Monday's air offensive by the US forces. The air-strike in Bala Boluk district came after an insurgent attack on a police check post that killed six people and three others on spy charges on Sunday.      Full news...

Xinhua: Unknown armed men set fire on a girl school in Ghor province, in northwestern Afghanistan, a local newspaper reported Sunday. "Unidentified men dynamited a girl school in Tiwara district Friday night and destroyed it," a security official was quoted by the daily Arman-e-Millie. The report put the attack on Taliban militants, but the outfit has yet to claim responsibility.      Full news...

IRIN: Open defecation, lack of toilets and poor sanitation in makeshift internally displaced persons (IDP) camps throughout Afghanistan are a health threat, particularly to children, health workers and aid agencies say. According to the Afghan government, at least 230,000 people are living in formal IDP camps and informal settlements where few sanitary, water and toilet facilities are available. About 500 families (2,500 individuals) displaced from southern regions have set up shacks, tents and mud huts in Qambar on the western outskirts of Kabul.      Full news...

IRIN: Razia, aged 10, cannot go to school because doing so is deemed too risky for girls in the southern province of Kandahar, and because her father believes only boys should attend school. “My father says schools are not for girls and that girls should work at home,” she told IRIN in Kandahar, adding that she had always wanted to go to school and become a doctor.      Full news...

Quqnoos: According to UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation UNESCO and the United Nations Children’s Fund UNICEF in Kabul, 66 per cent of Afghans are illiterate but the figure is remarkably higher for women, nearly 90 per cent. UNICEF estimates that more than 80 per cent of females and around 50 per cent of males lack accessing to education centres, mostly in the rural areas of the country. UNESCO Director for Afghanistan, Shigeru Ayoagi, marked this country with a highest rate of illiteracy in the world.      Full news...

Spero News: Today, while the internet makes it possible to find similar information about the conflicts in the world in which the US is participating, either as primary combatant or as the chief provider of arms, as in Gaza, one actually has to make a concerted effort to look for them. The corporate media which provide the information that most Americans simply receive passively on the evening news or at breakfast over coffee carefully avoid showing us most of the graphic horror inflicted by our military machine.      Full news...

PAN: Soldiers of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) shot dead three family members of a former Jihadi commander in southern Helmand province, officials said Saturday. Abdul Ahad Khan the former commander in Kabul confirmed the attack by foreign forces left three members of his family dead. ISAF helicopter opened fire on his family members at eight pm, he added, his three-months old granddaughter had survived the attack.      Full news...

NPR: A growing number of Afghans — including children — are escaping the pain of war and poverty by using opium or heroin, for as little as a dollar a day. A United Nations survey begun this month is widely expected to show that at least 1 in 12 people in Afghanistan abuses drugs — double the number in the last survey four years ago. Experts say that the alarming trend is not being addressed by the Afghan government and its international partners, even though most officials acknowledge that the drug scourge threatens lasting stability in Afghanistan.      Full news...

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...