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Civilian Casualties Evidence Emerges

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 27, 2008

KABUL, Afghanistan - A U.N. human rights team has found "convincing evidence" that some 90 civilians - among them 60 children - were killed in airstrikes on a village in western Afghanistan on Thursday night.

The U.N. team visited the scene and interviewed survivors and local officials, getting a name, age and gender of each person reported killed.

The team reported that 15 people had been injured in the airstrikes, which occurred in the middle of the night in the Shindand district.

"This is a matter of grave concern to the United Nations," Kai Eide, the U.N. special representative for Afghanistan said in a statement. The U.S. military has said that 25 militants and five civilians were killed in the airstrikes, which were aimed at a Taliban named Mullah Saddiq. It is investigating.

The New York Times
POPPY CROP DOWN LAST YEAR

Drought and anti-drug campaigns helped slash Afghanistan's opium poppy cultivation by 19 percent this year compared with 2007, but Taliban militants could still derive up to $70 million from the harvest, the U.N. anti-drug chief said Tuesday. The country is still far and away the world's leading source of the heroin-producing crop, a new U.N. report said. Last year, opium farmers cultivated 476,903 acres; this year they cultivated 388,000 acres, the report said.

The Associated Press

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