New York Times: President Hamid Karzai strongly condemned on Saturday a coalition airstrike that he said killed up to 95 Afghans — including 50 children — in a village in western Afghanistan on Friday, and said his government would be announcing measures to prevent the loss of civilian life in the future.      Full news...

PAN: Afghan National Army opened fire on angry protesters who were protesting the killing of dozens of civilians in the US bombardment in Shindand district of western Herat province. Hundreds of civilians came out in streets of Azizabad city.      Full news...

Telegraph.co.uk: US-led coalition forces killed 76 civilians - including 50 women and 19 children - in a military operation yesterday, the Afghan government said. The attack, which included air strikes, took place in the Shindand district of Herat province in the west of Afghanistan and an investigation is now underway, its interior ministry said in a statement.      Full news...

Democracy Now: As violence escalates in Afghanistan, both Barack Obama and John McCain support sending more troops. “Both of them are wrong,” says Sonali Kolhatkar, host of Uprising on Pacifica radio station KPFK and co-author of the book Bleeding Afghanistan. “You really cannot solve the situation in Afghanistan by throwing more troops at it, because over the last several years tens of thousands of troops in Afghanistan have not managed to do anything other than worsen the war.”      Full news...

PAN: At least 17 civilians including women were killed during a NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) raid in mountainous areas of Mahtarlam capital of eastern Laghman province, local elders complained Wednesday.      Full news...

Reuters: British troops accidentally killed four civilians and wounded three others with rockets during an operation against Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan, NATO and British officials said Sunday.      Full news...

AFP: Eight civilians being held in a compound by Taliban militants were killed in an air strike by US-led troops during a battle that also left 25 rebel fighters dead, the force said Monday. "Survivors reported that coalition aircraft dropped a bomb on the enemy position which killed eight of the civilians."      Full news...

PAN: 31 civilians including one woman and children were killed and injured as coalition troops bombed Tagab district in central Kapisa province, officials said on Saturday.      Full news...

PAN: Dozens of tribal elders and residents Monday staged a protest against the killings of four members of a family during on overnight operation in the southern Ghazni province.      Full news...

EurasiaNet: An umbrella group representing some 100 aid groups and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) has said that violence is at its worst level since the fall of the Taliban regime in 2001 and that it is concerned over the increasing number of civilian casualties and attacks on aid workers in recent months.      Full news...

CounterPunch: I’m really not sure what Bush, Obama, and McCain mean when they say they want to win in Afghanistan. And, I'm not sure they know either. It's probably just a public-relations gimmick to sound “tough on terror.” But, judging from what we've seen, they seem to think that “winning” means killing every last “terrorist” in Afghanistan. That sort of thinking is based on false assumptions and it's an unattainable goal.      Full news...

ANP: Suicides among veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan are reaching epidemic proportions. More than 6,000 veterans took their lives in 2005 alone, according to a study by CBS News. By some estimates, veterans are attempting suicide 1,000 times a month. Marine Corporal James Jenkins of New Jersey was one of these unsung casualties of war.      Full news...

Telegraph.co.uk: Thomas Schweich, who served as the State Department's most senior anti-drugs in official in Afghanistan until last month, said that Mr Karzai's overriding concern was to hold power. This had led him to protect 20 government officials, all linked to drug trafficking.      Full news...

New Statesman: Slaughters on this scale are common, and mostly unknown to the British public. I interviewed a woman who had lost eight members of her family, including six children. A 500lb US Mk82 bomb was dropped on her mud, stone and straw house. There was no "enemy" nearby. I interviewed a headmaster whose house disappeared in a fireball caused by another "precision" bomb.      Full news...

Democracy Now: Coming on the heels of Barack Obama’s highly publicized visit to Afghanistan—what he calls a central front in the so-called war on terror—we play an address by Pacifica radio host Sonali Kolhatkar, one of this country’s leading voices against the occupation of Afghanistan and co-author of the book Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords and the Propaganda of Silence.      Full news...

The Hindu: Each year since the parliamentary elections of 2005, Afghanistan has seen a spiralling toll of human lives. Initially, the resurgent Taliban burst out once again in the southern provinces, where they had their stronghold, engaging the international forces in conventional warfare. The escalated fighting was explained away by the military forces who said they were going into “new” areas, an admission that the initial operations against the Taliban in 2001 had a very limited mandate.      Full news...

Press TV: Tribal elders in Afghanistan's western Herat province have said dozens of civilians have been killed during aerial attacks by US forces. News of the fighting in Herat province came from tribal elders who reported dozens of casualties in the Zirko Valley in Shindan district.      Full news...

PAN: U.S.-led coalition troops Thursday conceded that eight Afghan civilians have been killed in an air strike in the western province of Farah during a raid against suspected militants.      Full news...

The Afghan Victim Memorial: They were killed or wounded on Friday, July 4, 2008, on a road near Aranas village on the Waygal River in the district of Waigal (Waygal), Nuristan Province. The Province’s Governor himself, Tamim Nuristani, told various media including the AFP that 16 civilians were killed in an air strike as they were leaving an area after being told by security forces a military operation was about to occur. District governor Zia-ul-Rehman said that 22 civilians had died in the strike.      Full news...

PAN: Officials in Nuristan province on Monday said almost 30 defenseless civilians have been reportedly killed during NATO-led International Security Assistance Forces (ISAF) airstrike in Want-Waigal district of the eastern province.      Full news...

Times Online: An Afghan government investigation has concluded that 45 women and children and two men were killed when a US aircraft bombed a wedding party in eastern Afghanistan last Sunday. The nine-man investigation team appointed by the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, found that only civilians were hit during the airstrike.      Full news...

US & News: The war in Afghanistan reached a wrenching milestone this summer: For the second month in a row, U.S. and coalition troop deaths in the country surpassed casualties in Iraq. This is driven in large part, U.S. officials point out, by simple cause and effect. Marines flowed into southern Afghanistan earlier this year to rout firmly entrenched Taliban fighters, prompting a spike in combat in territory where NATO forces previously didn't have the manpower to send troops. "We're doing something we haven't done in seven years, which is go after the Taliban where they're living," says a U.S. official.      Full news...

BBC: At least 250 Afghan civilians have been killed or wounded in insurgent attacks or military action in the past six days, the Red Cross says. It has called on all parties to the conflict to avoid civilian casualties.      Full news...

PAN: A bride was among 23 people killed as US-led coalition forces bombarded a wedding party in the eastern Nangarhar province Sunday morning, officials and residents alleged. Twenty-two people died on the spot as a result of the latest imprecise air raid that came hours after President Karzai ordered a probe into the alleged killing of more than a dozen residents in a US airstrike on a remote village in the neighbouring Nuristan province.      Full news...

Reuters: Twenty-two civilians, including women and children, were killed in an air strike by U.S.-led forces on Friday in Afghanistan's eastern province of Nuristan, an official said. The attack happened on a road in Want district while the noncombatants were travelling in two vehicles, the district chief, Zia-Ul Rahman, told reporters.      Full news...

Xinhua: Anti-war protesters repeatedly interrupted U.S. President George W. Bush's Independence Day speech Friday in Charlottesville, Virginia, ABC News reported. By the time Bush finished his 10-minute remarks, at least nine protesters had been taken away from the event by police.      Full news...

Quqnoos: Residents claim US soldiers in Bagram airbase have turfed them off their land. More than 1,500 families have been forced to leave their homes near Bagram airbase because American officials on the base have cut off their water supply, residents say.      Full news...

CounterPunch: Can anyone state exactly why foreign troops are fighting in Afghanistan? What is the collective aim, the specific mission, the ultimate objective, of the 60,000 soldiers there? I ask this because as I write the total of US deaths in Afghanistan “and region” is over 450, and news has come in of the killing of more British and American soldiers. And I wonder what all of them have died for.      Full news...

The Washington Post: Afghan opium poppy cultivation grew 17 percent last year, continuing a six-year expansion of the country's drug trade and increasing its share of global opium production to more than 92 percent, according to the 2008 World Drug Report, released Thursday by the United Nations. Afghanistan's emergence as the world's largest supplier of opium and heroin represents a serious setback to U.S. policy in the region. The opium trade has soared since the U.S.-led 2001 overthrow of the Taliban, which had eradicated almost all of the country's opium poppies.      Full news...

AFP: Hundreds of protesters took to streets in eastern Afghanistan on Monday after a father and son were allegedly killed by gunfire from US-led soldiers, a governor and witnesses said. Around 200 people demonstrated in the Khogyani district of Nangarhar province.      Full news...