Afghanistan, Civilian Deaths | featured news

Civilian deaths in the war in Afghanistan dropped in 2012 for the first time in six years, a sign of lessening hostilities, but insurgents dramatically expanded their campaign of assassinating government supporters, the United Nations said Tuesday.

Staff Sgt. Robert Bales will be charged with 17 counts of murder and six counts of assault and attempted murder in connection with the massacre, a senior U.S. defense official tells NBC News.

He is accused of the kind of crime that makes people shiver, the killing of families in their own homes under cover of night, the butchery of defenseless children. Under normal circumstances, Americans would dismiss such an act as worthy of only one response: swift and merciless punishment.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Friday accused the United States of failing to fully cooperate with an investigation into the massacre of 16 Afghan villagers by a U.S. staff sergeant and questioned whether only one soldier could have been involved.

Officials say the US mission in Afghanistan will not change in the wake of an American soldier's attack on civilians, and troops are still on course to hand over security control to Afghans by the end of 2014.

A U.S. soldier was detained after 16 Afghan civilians, including nine children, were shot dead in what witnesses described on Sunday as a night-time massacre near a U.S. base in Afghanistan's violent south.

Last year was the deadliest on record for civilians in the Afghan war, with 3,021 killed as insurgents ratcheted up violence with suicide attacks and roadside bombs, the United Nations said Saturday....

The attack on the boys amounted to one of the worst cases of mistaken killings of children by foreign-led forces in the Afghanistan war.

Western military officials acknowledge that none of those in a car fired on by soldiers had links to the insurgency.

A NATO airstrike in southern Afghanistan has killed 33 people after an aircraft fired on civilians mistakenly thought to be insurgents, the Afghan government said on Monday.