PeaceReporter.net, October 31, 2006

Burnt children after a NATO bomb attack

Burnt children after a NATO bomb attack. Their disfigured faces are the real face of war

By Maso Notarianni

Photos by Maso Notarianni at the Emergency Hospital in Lashkar Gah

more photos and details ( http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mwherold/latest.htm ) | Photos Index ( http://www.rawa.org/s-photos.htm )

Lashkargah: I don't know their names, I don't even know their age. They weren't in condition to talk.

They are five "presumed Taliban" arrived on Tuesday to the Emergency hospital in Lashkargah, placed in south Afghanistan. They are coming from the Kajaki area, in the eastern land of Helmand province, they travelled for hours through the dust of the desert. But to be arrived is just a great fortune.

The man who brought them here told us that the bombs started falling on their settlement just Monday evening .Two of the five "presumed talebans" (or talebans whenever there is time to disguise them) are his own sons.

The three remaining ones are kuchi children, the nomads of Afghanistan. They were brought by their older sister. She doesn't have the words to tell their names and their age. She doesn't even have the words to scream her anger against the lot, the destiny ,God and maybe against all the metal monsters which wing above Afghanistan and let falling their devices to spy the houses, the settlements and the people lives, in the name of holy war against terrorism; the same war George

W. Bush tells he continues on behalf of God.

The children don't moan when the tweezers remove the burnt skin from their bodies. Even not a wail. Only their eyes follow the faces of nurses and doctors around them and they are looked after with real care.

The editorial staff of Peacereporter in Milan, let me know that there aren't news about this attack in the "civilised world". And tomorrow probably there will be not.

Everyday arrive "presumed talebans" from far away countries and settlements to the Emergency hospital, and nobody knows about them. It doesn't exist the counting of the dead. They don't get the NATO honours and apologies.

They are regarded as "accidents". They are concealed in a criminal way by "the big circus of the information" which sends its correspondents to follow the tracks of this and that occidental vanished person, but doesn't make a move or even turn its face to report what happens everyday in Afghanistan: dozens, hundreds of children like those burnt alive by our humanitarian operation.

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