Afghanistan News

ROME (AFP) – A two-day global meet on the state of law in war-battered Afghanistan opened in Rome Monday and due to be addressed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, UN chief Ban Ki-moon and NATO head Jaap De Hoop Scheffer.

BUNYAT, Afghanistan – Fatama’s husband left home one night to smuggle drugs from their mud-thatch border village into Iran. The next morning, her brother-in-law gave her the news: Her husband had been killed.

In public, Afghanistan has played down US and British allegations that Iran is feeding weapons to Taliban insurgents, but in private, officials here say the charges are true — and worrying.

US military officials have admitted civilians were among those killed in a US-led air raid on a village in Afghanistan.

KABUL (AFP) – In a small room that looks like a prison cell, files stand in waist-high piles on the floor. An official explains there is no fixed price for a bribe to pick one out and send it moving through the courts.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – A local investigation into airstrikes that slammed into Afghan homes where Taliban fighters sought shelter found that 62 insurgents and 45 civilians were killed, two Afghan officials said Sunday.

LASHKAR GAH, Afghanistan (AFP) – Anti-Taliban air strikes by US- and NATO-led forces in Afghanistan killed 65 villagers including children, a local official said Saturday, amid growing anger here over civilian deaths.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – U.S.-led airstrikes targeting Taliban militants who had attacked NATO forces slammed into civilian homes in southern Afghanistan, killing both civilians and insurgents, Afghan and Western officials said Saturday.

WASHINGTON (AFP) – A fifth of the members of the US Senate on Friday warned the situation in Afghanistan was quickly getting worse and called on Washington’s NATO allies to share more of the security burden.

As of Friday, June 29, 2007, at least 342 members of the U.S. military had died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan as a result of the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001, according to the Defense Department.