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...

The Observer: British special forces operating on the border between Afghanistan and Iran have uncovered fresh evidence that Tehran is actively backing insurgents fighting UK troops. Documented proof that Iran is supplying the Taliban with devastating roadside bomb-making equipment has been passed by British officials to Tehran, prompting fears that the war in Afghanistan may escalate into a regional armed conflict.      Full news...

Aftenposten: Some cultural treasures allegedly carried out of Afghanistan by a Norwegian soldier are 4,000 years old, and the country wants them back. News magazine Ny Tid reports in its current edition that Afghan authorities are seeking return of ancient coins and a bottle that a soldier recently offered to an Oslo museum.      Full news...

Toronto Star: There's a lot we know about Afghanistan and a lot more we don't. An expert who knows much more than most of us – whose prescient insights I have benefited from for a decade and whom the John Manley commission consulted last year – says Afghanistan will get worse in the coming months.      Full news...

guardian.co.uk: Former guards and detainees whom McClatchy interviewed said Bagram was a centre of systematic brutality for at least 20 months, starting in late 2001. Yet the soldiers responsible have escaped serious punishment.      Full news...

The Toronto Star: The chaplain, Jean Johns, says she recently counselled a Canadian soldier who said he witnessed a boy being raped by an Afghan soldier, then wrote a report on the allegation for her brigade chaplain. In her March report, which she says should have been advanced "up the chain of command," Johns says the corporal told her that Canadian troops have been ordered by commanding officers "to ignore" incidents of sexual assault. Johns hasn't received a reply to the report.      Full news...

PAN: More than a dozen protestors suffered injuries as police fired to disrupt a peaceful demonstration against NATO operations in the southeastern province of Paktia, residents and officials said on Saturday.      Full news...

Amnesty International: The international community and the Afghan government have not met their pledge to provide the Afghan people, particularly women and girls, with better security, more responsive governance, and sustainable economic development, Amnesty International said today in a briefing paper issued ahead of the International Conference in Support of Afghanistan being held on 12 June in Paris.      Full news...

The Afghan Victim Memorial: At 10 P.M. on Tuesday night, June 10, 2008, in the village of Ebrahim Kariz, Mata Khan district of Paktika Province. US occupation forces launched an air and ground attack upon the village allegedly targeting a “militant hideout.” Residents said that dozens of civilians were killed.      Full news...

Daily Times: Among modern high-tech weapons aiding American combat troops to grapple with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, antidepressants and sleeping pills have become the lifeline for a significant yet a growing number of United States Army soldiers.      Full news...

The Observer: The other Afghanistan is largely ignored. This has 30 million people in whose name the war is being fought. Its themes are disappointment, bitterness and pessimism: a conviction that the vast intervention to rebuild the world's fourth poorest country has benefited only a small handful, and Afghanistan is heading for a new crisis. As even some Western diplomats are beginning to acknowledge, the prevailing fear is that the war is in danger not of being lost or won in Helmand province, but in the perceptions of Afghans.      Full news...

The Spoof: The New York Times Book Review revealed this week that the Bush administration has tried to hide more war casualties and fatalities than any US administration in history.      Full news...

IRNA: Afghan authorities have freed an aide to former Afghan Prime Minister Gulbaddin Hikmatyar, who was arrested in Pakistan in 2002, in an apparent move of reconciliation, Afghan sources said Friday.      Full news...

Marc W. Herold: The facts regarding Afghanistan’s revealed irrelevance to the United States (and a reluctant NATO) are visible to all who wish to look: on average for every $100 spent on military efforts in Afghanistan, a trifling $4.50 is budgeted (and an even smaller amount is disbursed) for so-called reconstruction efforts.      Full news...

SocialistWorker.org: A U.S. Marine Corps general has decided not to bring criminal charges against two officers who led their unit on a March 2007 killing spree that left 19 Afghan civilians dead and 50 more wounded. By contrast, the U.S. media barely noticed. For its part, the New York Times featured an article on Afghanistan a few days later celebrating a "fierce battle" by a Marine unit that drove Taliban fighters outside of the southern town of Garmser. The article referenced last March's massacre--but not the Marines' decision not to press charges.      Full news...

PAN: Two senators from Helmand told reporters in Kabul on Monday that many civilians were killed, wounded and displaced during the operation by NATO and Afghan forces. Haji Mahboob Garmsiri, a senator from the district, and Haji Sher Muhammad Akhunzada, head of the parliamentary committee for internal safety in the senate also from Helmand, said that the civilians were the worst sufferers in the operation.      Full news...

Tolo TV: Some representatives of Helmand province in the Parliament say that military operations of the American forces have been taking place in this district in the past two weeks and the forces have also killed and imprisoned civilians. These representatives demanded serious attention from the government regarding the matter. The civilians in Garmsir District of Helmand Province are living in terrible conditions.      Full news...

World Socialist Web Site: A United Nations investigator released a preliminary report last week citing widespread civilian deaths in Afghanistan, often at the hands of unaccountable units led by the CIA or other foreign intelligence agencies. Alston focused on civilian killings by US and other international military forces, citing 200 reported deaths in the first four months of 2008.      Full news...