AFGHANISTAN: Afghan victims of Taliban violence suffer in silence

AFP

By LYNNE O’DONNELL

November 22, 2009

KABUL — The stench of sewage hangs in the air as barefoot children clamber up a suburban hillside in Kabul, past green flags that flap over the graves of Afghans killed in suicide attacks.

Perhaps a third of the tombs, each surrounded by a wrought-iron fence, are marked as the final resting places of “martyrs,” as the victims of Taliban attacks are known.

Afghanistan is one of the world’s poorest countries, but three decades of war and an increasingly brutal Islamist insurgency have left it rich in martyrs and the misery their deaths leave behind.

In little more than three months, in Kabul alone, devastating suicide attacks have killed around 100 people. About 300 people have been injured.

IRAQ: Civilian killed in Iraq’s Diyala violence

BAQUBA, Iraq, Nov. 6 (Xinhua) — An Iraqi civilian was killed and two others were wounded in gunfire attack and roadside bomb explosion in Iraq’s volatile province of Diyala northeast of Baghdad on Friday, a provincial police source said.

AFGHANISTAN: Killing civilians triggers demonstration in S Afghan province

KABUL, Nov. 5 (Xinhua) — A crowd of Afghans came to the streets of Helmand’s provincial capital Lashkargah in south Afghanistan Thursday and denounced what they described arbitrary killing of civilians.

“Around 100 people carrying some dead bodies in Lashkargah Thursday morning accused NATO-led forces of killing nine civilians and calling on the government to investigate and punish those responsible,” a protestor and demonstrator Hajji Hafizullah Khan told Xinhua.

IRAQ: Three killed in Iraq’s violence

Nov. 4 (Xinhua) — Three people were killed, including a senior police officer and his wife, and nine others wounded in bomb and gunfire attacks near Baghdad and the volatile province of Diyala on Wednesday, police said.

A roadside bomb detonated near the car of Colonel Shalal al-Zoubaie, a deputy police chief of Abu Ghraib area west of Baghdad, killing him and his wife, a local police source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Trapped civilians caught up in shelling in Pakistan’s war

rapped civilians caught up in shelling in Pakistan’s war

29 Oct 2009 10:44:00 GMT

Written by: Nita Bhalla

NEW DELHI (AlertNet) – Tens of thousands of civilians in northwest Pakistan need protection from fighting between government forces and Taliban militants and dozens are being injured by shelling and bombardments every day, aid workers said on Thursday.

The army assault in the ethnic Pashtun tribal region of South Waziristan on the Afghan border has so far forced almost 200,000 people from their homes, most of whom have fled since the fighting officially began on Oct. 17.