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...

Knight Ridder/Tribune: U.S. Soldiers have been encouraged to spread the message of their Christian faith among Afghanistan's predominantly Muslim population, video footage obtained by Al Jazeera appears to show. Military chaplains stationed in the U.S. air base at Bagram were also filmed with Bibles printed in the country's main Pashto and Dari languages. In one recorded sermon, Lt. Col. Gary Hensley, the chief of the U.S. military chaplains in Afghanistan, is seen telling Soldiers that as followers of Jesus Christ, they all have a responsibility "to be witnesses for him".      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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

New York Times: The Taliban’s widening campaign in southern Afghanistan is made possible in part by direct support from operatives in Pakistan’s military intelligence agency, despite Pakistani government promises to sever ties to militant groups fighting in Afghanistan, according to American government officials.      Full news...

PAN: Residents of Garoch village in eastern Laghman province, who fled their homes as a result of several US forces air raids, are in dire need of shelters, fuel and drinking water in their makeshiftarrangements near the capital city of Mehtarlam.Garoch village northwest to Mehtarlam is surrounded by mountains range connecting to Sarobi district of Kabul province came under US air-strikes thrice, forcing the residents to flee and take refuge in Mehtarlam city.      Full news...

AFP: Afghan officials said five men killed in a US-led raid Sunday were all civilians, countering a statement from the military that said they were militants from a "terrorist network." The claim was the latest in a string of allegations of civilian casualties at the hands of foreign forces who are in Afghanistan to fight against insurgents, including Taliban and Al-Qaeda extremists.      Full news...

Daily Times: Respect for press freedom has fallen sharply in recent weeks in Afghanistan, a fact-finding mission report by international media watchdog, Reporters Without Borders said on Monday. The Paris-based organisation’s report said, “The murder of Jawed Ahmad, a reporter for various Canadian news media in Kandahar, the newspaper Payman’s closure as a result of pressure from conservatives and the government, and the supreme court’s confirmation of Perwiz Kambakhsh’s 20-year jail sentence are all evidence that press freedom is in serious crisis.”      Full news...

PAN: Angry with reported innocent killing of five persons of a family by the US forces in a raid in central Logar province last night, protestors besieged the building of Charkh district headquarters on Saturday. More than three hundreds protesting people, chanting anti-American slogans, called for an immediate trial of the killers.      Full news...

PAN: Officials in central Logar province say five members of the same family were killed in a raid by the US-led coalition forces last night. Spokesman for the provincial governor, Din Mohammad Darvish, told Pajhwok Afghan News Saturday that the US forces raided the house of one Abdul Rashid last night, killing him and his four sons in Naw Khar village of the Charkh district.      Full news...

Asia Times: As United States President Barack Obama simultaneously escalates and crafts a new strategy for the US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization-led counter-insurgency war and occupation in Afghanistan, critics say that the "surge" will send the country toward an "unmitigated disaster", the brunt of which will be borne by the civilian population.      Full news...

PAN: Residents of Lashkargah, capital city of southern Helmand province, on Wednesday staged a protest demonstration against the US-led coalition forces and Afghan government. They alleged that a civilian was killed and another wounded when a shell hit them in Spini Kotta area of the city during an operation by the foreign forces last night.      Full news...

Ennahar Online: The UN diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, who had participated in the reconstruction of Afghanistan after the Taliban, said that the country is in the process of ruin, in an interview published Tuesday by the U.S. weekly The Nation. The next conference on Afghanistan, scheduled for March 31 in The Hague and organized at the initiative of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, “comes after six very long years of waste,” he says. “We, the international community, have not helped much,” he says.      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...

USA Today: Afghan demonstrators blocked the path of a U.S. military convoy in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday after an overnight U.S. raid killed four Afghans and wounded two, an official and protesters said. Protesters in the eastern city of Khost threw rocks at the convoy, shouted "Death to America" and burned tires in the road, sending up dark plumes of smoke. Several hundred men gathered in the street, preventing the vehicles from passing.      Full news...

AFP: A joint inquiry by the NATO-led international force in Afghanistan and Afghan authorities has concluded that eight civilians were killed during a recent battle with insurgents in the south. In a joint statement, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force and the government of Helmand province said 17 other civilians were wounded in the February 23 firefight which erupted when an ISAF patrol was ambushed.      Full news...

The Associated Press: Afghan civilians will bear the brunt of an escalation in the Afghan war this year as thousands more U.S. troops deploy unless more is done by NATO forces and Taliban militants to protect them, a top Red Cross official said Monday. Civilian casualties in Afghanistan are "significantly higher" today than a year ago, and an intensification of the conflict this year could mean that consequences for many more Afghans will be "dire in the extreme," said Pierre Krahenbuhl, the director of operations for the International Committee of the Red Cross.      Full news...

Dawn: Western officials, the Afghan government and Taliban-linked mediators have been engaged in secret negotiations to bring elements of the group into Afghanistan’s political process, the Al Jazeera netwrok is reporting. The talks are reportedly taking place in Dubai, London and Afghanistan since the beginning of the year and revolve around the return of Gulbaldin Hekmatyar, the former Afghan prime minister, who has been in hiding for seven years, to Afghanistan.      Full news...

Amnesty International: President Barack Obama approved the deployment of extra troops in Afghanistan last week and urged NATO allies to follow suit. "2008 was the most violent year for civilians since the fall of the Taleban and Afghans are increasingly resentful about civilians casualties caused by international forces during night raids and other actions of this sort," said Sam Zarifi, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific director.. "The challenge for the USA and its allies is to ensure that the surge of international troops into the country will provide better security for Afghans, and not put them at greater risk."      Full news...