The Killid Group: A non-governmental group, New Afghanistan Women Association (NAWA), says crimes against women and children have increased because of continued official indifference and a law enforcement system that looks the other way to help the perpetrators. NAWA’s new research in six provinces – Kunduz, Jowzjan, Herat, Balkh, Takhar and Sar-i-Pul – shows a 30 percent increase in rape cases. Shafiqa Habibi, director of the non-governmental women’s group, says in most cases the abusers were “powerful individuals, commanders and irresponsible gunmen” or the relatives of the victims. “They don’t fear punishment.”      Full news...

PAN: Powerful individuals, illegal commanders and armed men were involved in most of 245 sexual abuse cases occurred in various provinces over the past six months, a survey said on Wednesday. The survey by the New Afghanistan Women Association (NAWA) was conducted in Kunduz, Takhar, Jawzjan, Herat, Balkh and Sar-i-Pul provinces, interviewing 2,000 people including women.      Full news...

The Killid Group: According to a folk story, Ghazni was once the most prosperous of cities but the gins destroyed it one night. On Aug 4 the Taleban detonated trucks piled with explosives to attack Ghazni Police and the Afghan National Directorate of Security (Intelligence).      Full news...

PAN: A female journalist has been stabbed to death in broad daylight in Mazar-i-Sharif, the capital of northern Balkh province, officials said. Palwasha Tokhi, who worked for the Bayan Radio station in Balkh, came under attack inside her house near the Hazrat Ali (RA) mausoleum in the 3rd police district late on Tuesday.      Full news...

Vice News: They were on their way back from a wedding with their families. Four women, one of them pregnant, traveling in a district that’s safer than most in Afghanistan. Paghman is not without its insurgents, but the violence raging in places like Helmand feels far from here. Much like the rest of Afghanistan, however, violence in Paghman unrelated to the insurgency is on the increase.      Full news...

Hambastagi.org (Translated by RAWA): Farah, a province in western Afghanistan along the Iranian border, is one of the most insecure provinces in the country. Its defenseless inhabitants are victims of the treacherous conspiracies of the warmongers every day. Besides the deadly poverty, instability and insecurity that plagues the people of this isolated province, they have witnessed countless instants of bombings by the occupier forces, mass killings and beheadings, suicide bombings, kidnapping of children, and the shooting of their working children by the mercenary Taliban and non-Taliban forces.      Full news...

Xinhua: Widows of victims of terrorist attacks in Afghanistan have resorted to begging in the streets with their young children forced to do odd jobs in order to survive. This was the harsh reality that the Afghan government has to face as it observed starting Tuesday Haftai Shahid or Martyrs Week to pay homage to Afghans who have lost their lives during the protracted war and instability in Afghanistan.      Full news...

PAN: Eleven civilians have been killed and 12 others wounded, including children and women, during a joint operation and a foreign forces airstrike in eastern Kunar province, the governor said on Wednesday. Shujaul Mulk Jalala told Pajhwok Afghan News that the operation had been underway since Tuesday in the Badbel Dara area of Narang district. A raid conducted by coalition forces also caused civilian casualties.      Full news...

Human Rights Watch: An Afghan court’s conviction of seven men for a gang rape was wholly undermined by numerous due process violations and political interference, Human Rights Watch said today. The court of appeals should competently, impartially, and independently conduct judicial review of the September 6, 2014 trial and the resulting death sentences.      Full news...

Amnesty International: NATO risks leaving Afghanistan with a legacy of impunity unless the unlawful killings of civilians by international forces over more than a decade are addressed through justice and reparations, Amnesty International said ahead of a key international summit on 4-5 September in Newport, Wales. Among the agenda items for the NATO heads of state and government attending will be the support and training of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), who will assume full responsibility for security in the country by the end of the year.      Full news...

The Wall Street Journal: News of a gang rape rattled the Afghan capital, stirring fears of a return to lawlessness amid a prolonged political crisis that is threatening to plunge the country into civil war. Afghan police said this week they arrested six men in connection with the rape, which took place in the early-morning hours of Aug. 23.      Full news...

PAN: Police on Tuesday paraded three more suspects allegedly linked to a group that gang rapped four women and looted passengers last month in the Paghman district of central Kabul province. The gang members in police uniform reportedly deprived passengers of their valuables and sexually abused four women. Three members of the gang have already been held in police custody.      Full news...

PAN: A Pakistani airstrike injured 15 people, including women and children, on the outskirts of Khost City, the capital of southeastern Khost province, near the Durand Line, officials said on Saturday. The airstrike took place on Friday evening in the Lakaro area, said the governor’s spokesman, Mubariz Zadran. He said the 15 people injured in the attack had been taken to the civil hospital.      Full news...

Khaama Press: At least six women were killed in single day in western Afghanistan as violence as against women soars. Local officials in Herat province have said at least five of women were killed in this province by relatives and unknown gunmen.      Full news...

PAN: At least 15 civilians, including eight of a family, were injured in two separate bomb explosions in eastern Nangarhar and southeastern Paktia provinces on Wednesday, officials said. The eight members of a family were travelling in a rickshaw in Behsud district of Nangarhar in the morning when a roadside bomb ripped through the vehicle, leaving all of them injured.      Full news...

BBC News: A year ago, a Dutch prosecutor published a list of 5,000 names, which immediately led to scenes of public mourning in Afghanistan. These were the names of people killed after a communist coup d’etat in 1978 - and some of those with blood on their hands are now living in Europe.      Full news...

PAN: Three civilians were killed and two others seriously wounded in a drone airstrike by NATO-led troops in the capital of central Logar province on Friday, an official said. Brig. Gen. Abdul Hakim Ishaqzai, the provincial police chief, told Pajhwok Afghan News the unmanned aircraft conducted the strike in the Padkhab area of Pul-i-Alam around noon.      Full news...

Khaama Press (Translated by RAWA): Two US forces fired and killed two children near their base inside the airport in Herat province. Noor Mohammad Zarifi, a member of the Provincial Council of Herat, said that these children were killed in the afternoon the day before when they wanted to gather garbage and iron scraps from that area.      Full news...

PAN: One civilian was killed and four others, including two children, were injured in two separate explosions in northern Jawzjan province, an official said on Wednesday. A 20-year-old shepherd was killed and two of his sisters injured during the first blast in the Chakosh village of Aqcha district, police official Col. Abdul Manan Raufi told Pajhwok Afghan News.      Full news...

Hindustan Times: A Sikh leader in Afghanistan said on Monday that he was trying to contact families over reports that 35 stowaways found in a shipping container in Britain were from the tiny, persecuted community. “I am urgently seeking more information,” Rawel Singh, a prominent leader of Afghanistan’s Sikh community, told AFP.      Full news...

WSWS.org: A report released by Amnesty International, Left in the dark: Failures of accountability for civilian casualties caused by international military operations in Afghanistan, investigates widespread civilian killings that have been carried out in recent years under the US-led occupation in Afghanistan.      Full news...

PAN: A man stoned his wife to death on Saturday in the western Herat province for having an alleged extramarital affair, an official said. Col. Abdul Rauf Ahmadi, spokesman for the provincial police, told Pajhwok Afghan News the incident took place this noon in the Nawak area of Kohistan district.      Full news...

CBSNews.com: As music played to celebrate the arrival of a new baby in his family, Muhammad Saber had every expectation the night would continue and end on a joyous note. Gunfire suddenly shattered those hopes. U.S. and Afghan troops had stormed into his family’s compound and, by the early morning hours, they would stand accused of killing five members of his family in Gardez, the capital of Afghanistan’s Paktia province.      Full news...

Deutsche Welle: “Three days after the attack, the commander invited us to the base and said please forgive us … We said we won’t forgive you. We told him we don’t need your money; we want the perpetrators to be put on trial. We want to bring you to court.” These are the words of Mohammed Nabi, whose 20-year-old brother Gul was killed, together with four youths, in a helicopter strike near the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad on October 4, 2013.      Full news...

Xinhua: At least five persons including the suicide bomber and four civilians were killed and 35 other civilians sustained injuries as a suicide car bomb rocked the fortified Afghan capital city Kabul on Sunday, Interior Ministry said in a statement released here. “A suicide bomber riding explosive-laden car blew it up next to a convoy of foreign forces on Darul Aman road at 11:30 a.m. local time today killing himself and four others, all innocent civilians,” said the statement.      Full news...

Various sources (Translated by RAWA): A woman known only as Uzra killed four Taliban members last Friday (August 1) in Nooristan province before being killed along with her toddler. According to a reporter from Fars News Agency in Kabul, Abdul Baaqi Nooristani, a top security official in Nooristan province told the media today, “A battle between a woman and Taliban militants continued for a few hours. Four militants were killed by her. She was killed at the end, along with her 3-year-old son.”      Full news...

PAN: Dozens of people from the Shindand district of western Heart province on Tuesday staged a rally against the killing of civilians in a NATO airstrike. Carrying the victims’ bodies, the protestors gathered in front of the governor’s office, chanting: “Death to the government and death to President Karzai. We will climb mountains to fight them.”      Full news...

PAN: Residents on Monday claimed 16 civilians were killed during an overnight joint Afghan-NATO forces’ operation in the Charkh district of central Logar province, but officials said most of the slain individuals were insurgents. Officials said a large number of insurgents were among those killed during the joint operation.      Full news...

PAN: Four children of a family were injured after Pakistani forces fired dozens of rockets landing in three districts of eastern Kunar province, security officials said on Friday. Police chief Birg. Gen. Abdul Habib Syedkhel told Pajhwok Afghan News that about 63 rockets were fired from across the Durand Line since Thursday evening until Friday morning.      Full news...

Al Jazeera America: Before dawn on June 1, a group of U.S. special forces and Afghan army commandos arrived by helicopter to the east of Alizai, a farming hamlet in Andar district in Taliban-controlled territory in central Afghanistan. They moved from house to house, arresting any fighting-age men they found, while the local Taliban fighters, who had been sleeping in a mosque at the other end of the village, fled without a fight.      Full news...