Wars, Civilian | featured news

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.

The call would soon become agonizingly familiar: A 28-year-old Army specialist from Joint Base Lewis-McChord, recently home from Afghanistan, had walked into a parking garage in Salt Lake City with a full set of body armor, ammunition clips and his AR-15 rifle.

Afghan officials said Sunday that a NATO airstrike killed 14 civilians, all of them women and children, in the southern province of Helmand on Saturday night. Local officials said the strike was aimed at Taliban fighters and missed. NATO said it was investigating.

NATO's leader confidently proclaimed on Sunday that Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's days are numbered, but he couldn't foresee how long the alliance's grinding mission to protect besieged civilians will last.

France and Britain said NATO should be doing more to pressure the Libyan regime. French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said the alliance should be firing on the weapons being used by Gadhafi’s troops to target civilians in Misrata.

Nato says forces loyal to Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi are using human shields in the war-torn town of Misrata. The coalition says Col Gaddafi's troops are using civilian vehicles and hiding their heavy armour in civilian areas.

The coalition has told the rebels that they are no less subject to bombardment by NATO planes than pro-Qaddafi forces if they endanger civilians.

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.

Platoon members charged with dismembering and photographing corpses, as well as hoarding a skull and other human bones, Army sources reveal.

The number of civilians killed by violence in Iraq almost doubled in July from June, a sign that insurgents may be trying to exploit political tensions after an election that produced no outright winner.