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...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): Recent statistics show that about 25% of women in the country are subjected to sexual violence. Younis Payan, deputy of the United Nations Population Fund in Afghanistan (UNFPA), who was giving a speech on the first day of a one-day workshop (A Happy Family and Intact Society from Islam’s Viewpoint), said the survey had been conducted recently. According to Younis Payan, the statistics show that about 30.7% women suffer physical violence and another 30% suffer from psychological violence.      Full news...

The Telegraph: The trade in children is spurred by the battered country's economy and the failure of foreign aid to reach beyond the coffers of central government in the capital Kabul. A cameraman working for Channel 4 News, Mehran Bozorgnia, witnessed the sale of an eight-year-old boy, Qassem, to Sadiqa, a wealthy woman from Kabul, outside the northern city of Mazar-e-Sharif.      Full news...

PAN (Translated by RAWA): The police in Farah province arrested five men-including a policeman -for kidnapping and raping a 15-year old girl and rescued the girl from them. According to him, the soldier of the Provincial Security Commander had kidnapped a 15-year old girl from the Farah city and took her to the home of one of his relatives, and there together with some other men raped her.      Full news...

National Post: Foreign aid organizations say food shortages and early snows may leave eight million Afghans -- 30% of the population -- on the brink of starvation this winter. Famine could easily overtake violence as the country's top problem. "The current situation is extremely fragile," said Susannah Nicol, a spokeswoman for the World Food Program(WFP) in Kabul.      Full news...

San Francisco Chronicle: Today, many Afghan couples are torn between adhering to the tradition of large families and the financial reality of caring for many children. Afghanistan has the highest fertility rate in Asia at more than seven children per woman. About 800,000 people annually are added to the nation's population of 32 million, according to the United Nations Development Fund. The dilemma is particularly significant in rural areas where parents depend on children to tend crops and livestock, but where war and drought have pushed many Afghans into poverty.      Full news...

RAWA News: According to a report of Radio Azadi, on December 8th, a horrifying crime shooked the little village of Khomdan, some distance from Dasht-e-Qala District of Takhar province. Two women and a 2-year old girl were cut into pieces with an axe, by unknown armed men. It’s still not known who is behind this crime.      Full news...

Time: Like many mothers in Afghanistan, Maghferat Samimi has affixed the photo of a child to her mobile phone. But the two-and-a-half-year-old is not her daughter.... Last year Samimi received a phone call from General Abdul Rashid Dostum, a U.S. ally who was appointed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai as Army Chief of Staff, threatening to have her raped "by 100 men" if she continued investigating a rape case in which he was implicated. Dostum denies ever making such a threat and calls the rape allegation "propaganda." A witness to the phone call, military prosecutor General Habibullah Qasemi, was dismissed from his post soon after, despite carrying a sheaf of glowing recommendation letters penned by U.S. military supervisors.      Full news...

PAN: Locals in Helmand province claim that ten civilians including women and children were killed in the air strike of coalition forces in the Nad-e-Ali district. Haji Abdul Haq Helmandwal, a local elder said that a house in Shin village was targeted in the attack where six children and two women were killed. He said that six others were injured who were ferried by ISAF plane for treatment in their facility.      Full news...

IRIN: The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) has called on all warring parties in Afghanistan to consider children as "zones of peace" to help protect them against the ravages of war. UNICEF says children are among the most vulnerable groups in the conflict; they do not have the capacity to influence the decisions of warring parties and should not be affected by the conflict.      Full news...

IRIN: Drought, poverty and lack of food have adversely affected the life of many children in Chemtal and elsewhere, forcing some to work instead of going to school. Eight-year-old Ahmad Shafi and his younger brother spend many hours a day fetching drinking water for their family in the drought-stricken Chemtal District of Balkh Province, northern Afghanistan. They have been unable to attend school as a result. "We start around eight in the morning and finish by midday," Ahmad told IRIN, adding that their job was "difficult" and "long".      Full news...

UNICEF: With 504 recorded cases, Afghanistan has a relatively low number of confirmed HIV cases, but experts on the disease are raising alarm bells for an expected rise in reported numbers, especially among street children. “Children are at high risk to contract HIV in Afghanistan,” said Dr. Malalai Ahmadzai, UNICEF Maternal Health and HIV Specialist. “Those children who have lost their parents due to war, those children who are doing street work and labour, and also those children who may be at risk because of transmission from mother to child.”      Full news...

Quqnoos: Friday’s riots in Kabul, caused by the death of an Afghan civilian at the hands of foreign troops, were just the latest sign of the anger felt by many Afghans at continuing civilian casualties. Figures show that at least 540 Afghans civilians were killed in the first nine months of 2008. Of these, 367 were killed by the Taliban and other militants, many in suicide attacks. Two suicide bombers have struck Kabul in the last week. Seven people have been killed and 27 were wounded. All of them were civilians. The children of Nasir Ali - a road sweeper killed in a suicide bomb on Sunday.      Full news...

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.      Full news...

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.      Full news...

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.      Full news...

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.      Full news...

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.      Full news...

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.      Full news...

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.      Full news...