VOA News: NATO says an airstrike by one of its warplanes has killed eight civilians in southern Afghanistan, in the midst of a controversy over civilian casualties. The NATO-led international military force on Wednesday said its troops called in the airstrike Tuesday in Helmand province after a clash with about 25 insurgents. A NATO statement accused the militants of using the civilians as human shields.      Full news...

Quqnoos: Foreign troops gunned down a local farmer Monday in Pushtrod District of the western Farah province, an official said. The US convoy opened fire on the farmer when he war irrigating his farms early Monday morning in the district, north of the provincial capital city. Bilqees Roshan, a provincial council member said the body of the farmers is flamed.      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 Sunday Times: When civilians get killed in conflicts in Sudan, Zimbabwe or Sri Lanka, the United Nations predictably raises hell. But when civilians are victims of domestic insurgencies or military conflicts involving the five big powers -- the US, Britain, France, China and Russia (plus Israel) -- the Security Council invariably remains silent or paralysed.      Full news...

AFP: Hundreds of Kabul University students labelled the United States "the world's biggest terrorist" on Sunday as they protested against US air strikes said to have killed scores of Afghan villagers. Chanting "Death to America", "Death to the biggest terrorist" and "long live Islam", up to 1,000 protesters marched outside the university to condemn what is believed to be the deadliest such incident in nearly eight years.      Full news...

Quqnoos: The tiny roads of the Afghan village do not witness the cheer of kids, the muddy houses are destroyed and the survival villagers even cannot find a place to mourn the victims of the fatal air-raid. It’s incredibly harsh to tolerate a second in Geranai, a remote village in Bala-Buluk district of the western Farah province, where the green rural area is heavily bombed and single smiling face can hardly be seen. One or two are remaining from a family of 10 to 15 members and the village is mourning the deaths, exceeding 100.      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...

Reuters: The U.N. mission head in Afghanistan begged President Hamid Karzai not to name as his running mate an ex-guerrilla chief linked to accusations of human rights abuses but was ignored, a diplomatic source close to him said on Monday. Karzai registered to run for re-election on Monday and named former vice president and defence minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim to stand with him as the senior of two vice presidents.      Full news...

Xinhua: One Afghan civilian was killed and two others sustained injuries as they came under fire of international troops in west Afghanistan Sunday morning, police said. "This morning a civilian car from Farah was heading to Herat province but was fired upon by the international troops on the road linking airport to Gazara district, as a result a 12-year-oldgirl was killed," Abdul Rauf Ahmadi, police in western region.      Full news...

Asia Times: Nearly 30 years after their first foray into the land-locked buffer state, married couple and journalist-historians Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould could not have chosen a more appropriate time to publish their comprehensive Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story. A chronically disinformed US public should leap at the chance to familiarize themselves with an honest overview of their country's historically scandalous involvement in the region.      Full news...

RAWA News: The first 100 days of a new administration in Washington is always a time for comment and speculation about the future. It is an American tradition dating back to Franklin Roosevelt's tenure in 1933 during the Great Depression. But my focus here is upon what has the arrival of the Obama administration meant not within the United States, but rather for the everyday life of common Afghans.      Full news...

PAN: A father murdered his daughter and her paramour for their alleged involvement in an adulterous affair in the Timoryan village of Baghlan-i-Markazi district of northern Baghlan province on Tuesday night. The boy of age 23 and the girl, 25, was cousins. Dr. Khalil Naramgo, head of the district hospital said bodies of the two have been brought to the hospital. He claimed after the postmortem report it was learnt that the couple did not have sexual relations.      Full news...

Associated Press: The Army has approved new guidance to military commanders in an effort to stem the rising toll of soldier suicides, officials said late Thursday. Army leadership has become more alarmed as suicides from January through March rose to a reported 56 -- 22 confirmed and 34 still being investigated and pending confirmation. Usually, the vast majority of suspected suicides are eventually confirmed. The 2009 number compares to 140 for all of last year, a record blamed partly on strains caused by repeated deployments for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.      Full news...

National Post: Held down by men in police uniform, the half-naked victim screams in pain as another man wearing a white dishdasha brandishes a plank with a nail sticking out the end. “Get closer, get closer,” he instructs the camera operator as he sets to beating again. The man directing the action is said to be Sheik Issa bin Zayed al Nahyan, a member of the ruling family of the United Arab Emirates. His victim is Mohammed Shah Poor, an Afghan grain dealer, suspected of shortchanging the Emirati royal in a delivery.      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...

Reuters: Survivors of a strong quake in a remote corner of eastern Afghanistan say they spent a freezing night in the rain outside the collapsed remains of their homes because promised government help did not reach them. The local government said it had sent over 200 tents and around 600 blankets to the quake zone, and other assistance was on its way. But residents said they had seen no sign of the help, and spent a frightening night outside, with 7 or 8 aftershocks.      Full news...

Globe and Mail: What started eight years ago as a military operation to deprive terrorists of a safe haven from which to launch attacks on the West morphed, in the eyes of many, into something much grander: an exercise in nation building and bolstering human rights. The hopes for an improvement in the lives of Afghanistan's women have been sorely challenged recently by a series of events, from the horrific acid attacks on schoolgirls in Kandahar and the targeted assassinations of female politicians and police, to what is seen as the ultimate betrayal: the Afghan government's endorsement of the family law bill that appears to legalize rape in marriage.      Full news...

OpEdNews: Last month, the new Afghanistan parliament passed the "Shia Family Law" which legitimates marital rape and child marriage for Shia Muslims who make up ~15% of the population. At least 300 women protested the law, with their faces exposed. Nearly 1,000 Afghan men and their slaves turned maniacal and stoned the protesters. Police struggled to keep the two groups apart, reports the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA).      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...

Common Dreams: On April 4th, at a large demonstration in Strasbourg, France, U.S. Sergeant Matthis Chiroux planned to publicly apologize to Afghan peace activist Malalai Joya for participating in the occupation of her country; however, before he could do so, the demonstration was disrupted by attacks of the French police. He made his apology instead on April 5, 2009, at the NATO Congress in Strasbourg.      Full news...

Associated Press: A group of some 1,000 Afghans swarmed a demonstration of 300 women protesting against a new conservative marriage law on Wednesday. The women were pelted with small stones as police struggled to keep the two groups apart. The law, passed last month, says a husband can demand sex with his wife every four days unless she is ill or would be harmed by intercourse — a clause that critics say legalizes marital rape. It also regulates when and for what reasons a wife may leave her home alone.      Full news...

Global Pundit: Sgt. Chiroux, an Individual Ready Reservist, publicly refused activation and deployment orders to Iraq, citing the war as “an illegal and immoral occupation”. He has also chosen to stay on U.S. soil to ” to defend himself from any charges brought against him by the military”. Chiroux declared in a recent press release “My resistance as a noncommissioned officer to this abhorrent occupation is just as legitimate now as it was last year”.      Full news...

The Associated Press: A NATO operation killed six civilians Monday, including a woman and a young girl, in a mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan, villagers and officials said. But the military alliance said its force killed four to eight "militants." The governor of Kunar province, Sayed Fazelullah Wahidi, said four men also died in the NATO air strikes. Five houses were damaged, and one was demolished, Wahidi and villagers said.      Full news...

Reuters: Taliban militants publicly executed a man and girl on Monday for eloping when she was already engaged to marry someone else, an official said, in a sign of the grip the Islamists have over parts of Afghanistan. Hashim Noorzai, head of Khash Rud district in southwestern Nimruz province, said the two were executed by gun shots in front of a crowd of villagers.      Full news...

RAWA News: While much continuity with Bush policies exists, some opportunistic changes in the execution of the Afghan war have been made. Most are inspired by the aim to better market “the good war” to the American public. For example, under Obama U.S/NATO forces are relying less upon deadly air strikes which are 4-10 times more deadly for Afghan civilians than are ground attacks. As a consequence, the monthly total of Afghan civilians killed by US/NATO action has declined moderately at the same time as the monthly death toll of occupation forces has risen.      Full news...

The New York Times: The Obama administration is basking in praise for its welcome commitment to shut down the American detention center at Guant?namo Bay. But it is acting far less nobly when it comes to prisoners held at a larger, more secretive military detention facility at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. In February, the new administration disappointingly followed the example of the Bush White House in opposing judicial review for prisoners who have been indefinitely detained at Bagram without any charges or access to lawyers.      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...

DPA: A provincial governor in south-eastern Afghanistan said Thursday that US-led international troops killed five civilians including two women and a 7-day-old child and wounded two other women in an operation against suspected militants. The coalition troops conducted an operation in a village near Khost city, the capital of the province of the same name Wednesday night "after they claimed that they were attacked by small arms fire," Hamidullah Qalandarzai, the provincial governor, told the German Press Agency DPA.      Full news...