IWPR: A year after her family died in an airstrike, a young girl still lives in the same village, alone and constantly in fear. Seven-year-old Zahra looks like a typical Afghan girl in her traditional long dress and scarf, her short black hair peeking out from her head covering. On the night of August 22 2008, all of Zahra’s immediate family was killed by American bombs. In pursuit of Taleban commander Mullah Siddiq, United States Special Forces and the Afghan army launched an airstrike on the village of Azizabad in Shindand district of Herat. An investigation by the United Nations said that 90 people, 60 children and 30 adults, died.      Full news...

BBC Persian (Translated by RAWA): Poverty in the month of Ramadan shows itself with much harsher face in the dinning cloth of most of the families in Kabul city.... The monthly income of Marzia is 1,500 Afghanis equivalent to 30 dollars which she takes from the government as her husband's pension. Once her husband has been a worker of municipality but now extremely needs to be cured and this money is even not enough for the cost of his sickness. This man already was paralyzed and now he is also suffering from mental problem and is always needs someone to take care of him.      Full news...

IRIN: As the van passed along the bumpy road, groans could be heard coming from the three wounded passengers, but once on asphalt near Kandahar city, southern Afghanistan, only one person was still murmuring; the two others (teenagers) had passed away. The three were injured in an air strike on their village in Shah Wali Kot District, Kandahar Province, earlier this month, according to Abdul Aleem, the surviving injured man.      Full news...

CNN: Afghanistan's reputation as the world's leading narcotics supplier is well-known, but in a squalid ruin in Kabul, the country hides a darker secret -- a huge home grown drug addiction problem now on the brink of fueling an HIV/AIDS epidemic. Here junkies lie in their own filth, wasted limbs poking out of blood-spattered clothing as they blank out the abject misery of their surroundings. In one room, a veritable narcotics bazaar offers pills and drug paraphernalia -- with hits retailing at less than $4.      Full news...

Xinhua: A mass grave containing remaining of over 30 bodies have been discovered in Kunduz province north of Afghanistan, a local official said Tuesday. "These bodies which speak from barbaric wars during past decades were found in Ali Abad district on Monday," Habibullah Mutasim, the governor of Ali Abad told Xinhua.      Full news...

IRIN: Twenty-eight deaths from cholera and/or acute watery diarrhoea (AWD) have been reported in Afghanistan in the past two months, the Ministry of Public Health (MoPH) has said. At least 673 cases of AWD and/or cholera had been reported in 11 of the country’s 34 provinces, it said. According to the World Health Organization, cholera, which is rarely reported in Afghanistan, is an acute diarrhoeal infection caused by ingestion of the bacterium vibrio cholerae.      Full news...

The Christian Science Monitor: A retaliatory NATO airstrike that killed scores of civilians. The kidnapping of New York Times journalist Stephen Farrell. The deadly shooting of his Afghan translator and the death of a British soldier in a violent and controversial rescue operation days later.The events of this week have drawn attention to the unraveling security in northern Afghanistan in a way months of the creeping insurgency had not. Long considered one of the most stable and peaceful parts of the country, the northern provinces have seen rising violence as heavy insurgent activity has spread to 80 percent of the country – up from 54 percent two years ago.      Full news...

The Independent: Edward Stourton's last day on the Today prog had him appropriately serious-voiced about Operation Panther's Claw, which has been very heavy on the troops in Helmand. The BBC's man in Afghanistan said that while just over 4,300 votes for that popinjay Karzai had been counted in Babaji, a local election observer claimed that only 15 people had turned up. Ed left his listeners in no doubt that 10 British soldiers had sacrificed their lives for this grand-scale piece of electoral fraudulence.      Full news...

The Independent: The military raid to free the British-Irish journalist Stephen Farrell from his Taliban captors was successful in the narrowest possible sense. The rescuers got Mr Farrell out of the hands of his kidnappers in Kunduz, northern Afghanistan. Two Afghan civilians are said to have died in the operation. And Mr Farrell's Afghan interpreter, Sultan Munadi, was shot dead, quite possibly by Nato forces.      Full news...

IRIN: Afghanistan’s anti-begging commission has arrested hundreds of beggars in Kabul in the past few months, but most are released if relatives guarantee they will not beg again, officials said. The government outlawed street-begging in November 2008 and set up a commission - made up of different government bodies and the Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) - to end street-begging in the capital.      Full news...

RAWA News: The magic cut-off is revealed to be about 30-40. Such revealed facts tell far more than mere words.... In the past few years, U.S. officialdom and the mainstream press barely take note of dead Afghans unless the number exceeds thirty. On the other hand, when a Taliban’s improved explosive device kills innocent bystanders, meters of newsprint spews forth often accompanied with victims’ photos. For the U.S. press, Human Rights Watch, and U.S. citizenry clearly some bodies are worthy of mention whereas others are not.      Full news...

IRIN: It was almost midnight when a massive bang awakened residents of Kabul’s fifth district on 5 September. A rocket had landed on a house killing three members of the family: the father, mother and a child. In the past month at least 10 rockets have been fired on different parts of Kabul, often killing or wounding civilians, according to the Ministry of Interior (MoI).      Full news...

The Times: US troops stormed a hospital and tied up medical staff, in breach of international law, a Swedish charity has claimed. Soldiers from the US Army’s 10th Mountain Division made an armed raid last Wednesday on the clinic, in eastern Afghanistan, to search for insurgents, Anders Fänge, the director of the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan, said. “This is a clear violation of internationally recognised rules and principles,” he said.      Full news...

The Age: AFGHAN election workers loyal to President Hamid Karzai set up hundreds of fictitious polling sites where no one voted but still registered hundreds of thousands of ballots towards the President's re-election, according to senior Western and Afghan officials. Up to 800 fake centres existed only on paper, said a senior Western diplomat in Afghanistan who spoke on condition of anonymity.      Full news...

The Guardian: The stooped and withdrawn 18-year-old breathed painfully as he relived the day last month when shrapnel from a missile ripped through his lung and bowels. "I was just a few steps outside my front gate when about eight rockets landed," he says, sitting in a hospital in the provincial capital of Helmand, bandages around his chest. "I was hit and ran into the house where women and children were yelling because a rocket had also landed on one of the rooms."      Full news...

Xinhua: Unknown armed men shot dead a woman worked outside home in Kandahar province the birthplace of Taliban in south Afghanistan on Monday, police said. "Unidentified armed men opened fire on Ms. Latifa, 21, in Kandahar city this morning, killing her on the spot," police chief of southern region Ghulam Ali Wahdat told Xinhua. Worked as in-charge of tailoring project in Women Affairs Department, the late Latifa, was on her way home when two armed men riding a motorbike opened fire and killed her.      Full news...

Mirror.co.uk: A traumatised soldier who saw one of his friends die in Afghanistan says he was told by Army bosses to "get p****d and have a fight" to get over it. Sapper Martin Lindley, 22, says it showed the Army's lack of support as he struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder. Eventually he was kicked out of the Army after going off the rails. And he has not been able to get a job as he drinks a litre of vodka a night to block out his memories of the war in Afghanistan.      Full news...

McClatchy Newspapers: Detailed polling records released by an Afghan election commission revealed numerous polling places in Kandahar province where all the votes were delivered to a single candidate — President Hamid Karzai. The records appear to bolster fraud allegations surrounding the Aug. 20 presidential election — which has become ever more critical to the U.S. and its allies in the face of Afghanistan’s increasingly powerful Taliban insurgency.      Full news...

PAN: Residents of Chahar Dara district in northern Kunduz province say more than 150 civilians were killed and 20 others wounded in Friday's air strike by NATO-led forces. The bombing in Haji Aman village came as insurgents and residents emptied oil into jerry canes from tankers hijacked by Taliban militants from the Kunduz-Baghlan Highway. Inhabitants of the area told Pajhwok Afghan News all those killed in the bombardment were civilians and there were no Taliban at the site at the time the attack took place.      Full news...

IRIN: Human rights groups are calling on the Afghan government to adopt a new law which would more clearly differentiate rape, a criminal offence, from consensual adultery, considered a serious crime in the country. "Rape and adultery are two different issues and should be separate in law. Rape is an act of violence and coercion and the inflicting of suffering on a victim, and is not consensual, whereas adultery is consensual, freely chosen," Sonya Merkova, a researcher at London-based Amnesty International, told IRIN.      Full news...

IRIN: Flash floods killed at least 11 and damaged dozens of houses in Alingar District, Laghman Province, eastern Afghanistan on 2 September, according to provincial officials. "So far five bodies have been found and search and rescue activities are ongoing in the affected areas," Sayed Ahmad Sapai, a spokesman for the Laghman governor's office, told IRIN, adding that most victims were children and women.      Full news...

Toronto Star: The flame from a match pierces pitch-black darkness, casting an eerie glow on dirty, feral faces. Sucking sounds. Lungs expand with the inhalation of heroin fumes. A gulp and an aahhh. There's more furtive movement nearby, scratching, the rustle of newspapers crunching underfoot, foul-smelling bodies pressing in. These are the human moles of Kabul, drug addicts who live in the stark ruins of the Russian Cultural Centre, all rubble and dank subterranean warrens.      Full news...

Washington Post: One week after Afghanistan's presidential election, with the winner still undeclared, increasing accusations of fraud and voter coercion threaten to undermine the validity of the results, deepen dangerous regional divisions and hamper the Obama administration's goals in this volatile country.... "I was a witness to fraud, and I couldn't do anything to stop it," said a female election monitor at a voting site...      Full news...

Time: The frantic run-up to Afghanistan's presidential election has given way to a bitter anti-climax. Even as results trickle in, they are in danger of being overwhelmed by mounting claims of fraud from the leading candidates, who appear to be increasingly unlikely to back down should the final verdict not go their way. In the second installment of results, announced on Wednesday, President Hamid Karzai extended his lead over his top challenger, former Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah.      Full news...

BBC News: A blast has been reported in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, a day after the country's deadliest bombing for a year killed some 43 people there. The explosion was reported close to the site of Tuesday's car bomb attack. There are reports of casualties. A local official told the BBC the injured were being taken to hospital. "This is a terrorist attack but we are trying to find out more details," a senior government official in the city told the BBC.      Full news...

AFP: Rescue workers Wednesday sifted through the rubble of the deadliest bombing in Afghanistan for a year as signs of poor election turnout pointed to the success of Taliban intimidation. With the Taliban-led insurgency at record levels, the Islamist rebels were blamed for setting off a truck bomb in the heart of southern city Kandahar, killing up to 43 people and injuring 65, almost all civilians. The bomb blew up near a Japanese construction company, a guest house used by foreigners and government offices.      Full news...

Aljazeera.net: An Afghan journalist has been killed by gunmen in northwest Pakistan's lawless tribal belt, officals and colleagues have said. Janullah Hashimzada, 40, was returning from Afghanistan on a bus when fighters ambushed the vehicle on Monday near Jamrud in the Khyber tribal district. Taliban fighters are known to operate in the area where he was killed. Rehan Gul Khatok, an assistant administrative agent in Jamrud, told the AFP news agency: "Unidentified gunmen stopped his coach, pulled him out and shot him dead."      Full news...

RAWA News: Buried in the public relations blather of U.S. Marine legions “liberating” Helmand and Afghan (sham) “elections” as democracy-restored is an unspoken trade-off over who disproportionately dies in America’s modern wars in the Third World. Under George W. Bush, U.S politico-military elites chose to fight the Afghan war with minimal regard for so-called collateral casualties. But the soaring toll of killed Afghan civilians swayed world public opinion and stoked the Afghan resistance as grieved Afghan family members sought revenge.      Full news...

Foreign Policy: So it finally happened. The election that we've been waiting for and looking forward to at least since last winter took place yesterday all over the country. I'll refrain from writing anything about the rest of the country. I'll just be talking about the things in Kandahar that I saw and was able to confirm from here on the ground. There weren't so many foreign journalists down here and most are unlikely to publish detailed accounts of what happened and the things that they saw; NPR decided not to run a piece on the election down here, judging that "one piece from Kabul was enough."      Full news...

The Independent: Call it the mystery of the invisible voters. At one polling station in Nad-e-Ali, just over 400 people had voted by 1pm. Three hours later, the figure had apparently surged to some 1,200. This despite the fact the streets were empty, all shops and businesses were shut and an Afghan army officer saying his men standing guard had hardly seen any civilians heading to these particular voting booths.      Full news...