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May 1, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: A man was detained for sexually assaulting his daughter in northern Baghlan province, where a woman’s a body was also found by the authorities, an official said on Wednesday. The incest took place in Khost district where the accused -- Abdul Alim -- was detained late on Tuesday, the provincial police chief, Brig. Gen. Asadullah Sherzad, told Pajhwok Afghan News. Full news...
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May 1, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
RFE/RL: A number of girls appear to have been poisoned at a school in the Afghan capital, Kabul. A teacher at the Sultan Razia High School told RFE/RL’s Radio Free Afghanistan that students fell ill after smelling some kind of gas when they entered their classrooms on May 1. Full news...
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April 29, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Truthout: A new United Nations report on the state of opium cultivation in Afghanistan reveals a worsening situation, after more than a decade of US and NATO occupation. It confirms the failure of counternarcotics missions in the country. In 2012, poppy cultivation rose for a third year in a row and now extends over 154,000 hectares, an 18 percent increase over 2011. Full news...
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April 28, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The New York Times: For more than a decade, wads of American dollars packed into suitcases, backpacks and, on occasion, plastic shopping bags have been dropped off every month or so at the offices of Afghanistan’s president — courtesy of the Central Intelligence Agency. All told, tens of millions of dollars have flowed from the C.I.A. to the office of President Hamid Karzai, according to current and former advisers to the Afghan leader. Full news...
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April 27, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
BBC News: Two cases of forced amputations in Afghanistan’s Herat province have served as a grim reminder of Taliban-style justice almost 12 years since the movement was ousted from power. Just over a month ago, Fayz Mohammad and his neighbour Zarin were two ordinary young Afghan men. They held down good jobs as drivers for a local transport company and were happy to be able to feed their families. Full news...
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April 27, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Center for Public Integrity: The principal food supplier to US troops in Afghanistan is embroiled in a costly dispute with the Pentagon that has attracted congressional interest. The Pentagon allowed a private firm providing food and water to U.S. troops in Afghanistan to overbill taxpayers 757 million USD and awarded the company no-bid contract extensions worth more than 4 billion USD over three years... Full news...
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April 26, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: A bus collided on Friday with the wreckage of a truck that had been attacked by Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan, killing 45 people aboard the bus in a fiery crash, officials said. The battered oil tanker had been left in the middle of a narrow road near the border of Kandahar and Helmand provinces for several days after insurgents attacked it. Police considered the area too dangerous to enter, the officials said. Full news...
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April 25, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Washington Guardian: Talk about burning taxpayer money! The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers spent more than 5 million USD to have a contractor build two garbage incinerators at a forward-operating base in Afghanistan, but then the military never used the equipment because officials closed out the project and released the contractors before the machines actually worked. Full news...
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April 24, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: The Kabul crime branch chief, Lt. Gen. Mohammad Zahir, on Wednesday accused a number of parliamentarians of supporting kidnappers and making efforts to release them from prisons. Addressing a press conference in Kabul, Gen Zahir claimed whenever they arrested kidnappers, members of Wolesi Jirga or Meshrano Jirga overtly launched efforts to have them freed. Full news...
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April 23, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
MSN: Well, everyone, this is the way things are now. Did you know that? Were you prepared to see a video of small children firing guns and presumably being indoctrinated to kill other human beings before they've reached adolescence, because that is what the world is coming to now? Full news...
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April 22, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Killid Group: Shah Barat was a zookeeper at the Kabul Zoo when Taleban fighters marched into the city. He did not flee like tens of thousands of people. He stayed on to look after the animals in the zoo. Before the Taleban took over the city in 1996, Kabul Zoo was home to 37 species. There was Marjan, the zoo’s much-loved lion, an Indian elephant, deer, birds and many other animals. Full news...
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April 20, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: A Taliban court ordered cutting off a hand and a foot of two men convicted of robbery and cooperating with a security firm in western Herat province, officials said on Saturday. The victims were then taken to a hospital in Torghondai area, a border town of Robat Sangi district, a spokesman for western zone hospitals, Dr. Mohammad Rafique Sherzai, told Pajhwok Afghan News. Full news...
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April 20, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Hundreds of people on Saturday held a protest rally against what they claimed civilian deaths at the hands of foreign troops in central Kapisa province, northeast of Kabul. The demonstrators claimed ISAF soldiers raided a civilian house on Friday night in the Karamkhel area of Tagab district, killing two inmates and arresting a third after being shot wounded. Full news...
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April 19, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Deutsche Welle: As many as 80 percent of marriages in Afghanistan take place without the consent of the bride, who is often a child. Many of them see killing themselves as the only way out. Weddings are one of the few occasions in Afghanistan when families and friends can forget their sorrows and the ongoing violence in their country and have some fun. It is traditional to dance into the early morning hours after a feast. Full news...
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April 18, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: At least 17 high school girls fell ill and lost consciousness after a suspected poisonous gas attack at their school in Taloqan, the capital of northern Takhar province, officials said on Thursday. The female students of 8th, 11th and 12th grade at the Bibi Hawa Girls’ High school smell a poisoning gas on Thursday morning at classrooms before falling unconscious, the education department spokesman Gul Agha Nazari told Pajhwok Afghan News. Full news...
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April 17, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
BBC News: At least 24 people have been killed in five separate attacks across west, east and north Afghanistan, officials say. Casualty figures for April suggest that about 182 people have been killed in violence in Afghanistan this month, making it the bloodiest of 2013. Some of the worst incidents took place in the west, where seven people were killed and three injured after a roadside bomb hit a civilian truck. Full news...
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April 16, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: Opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has been increasing for a third year in a row and is heading for a record high, the U.N. said in a report released Monday. The boom in poppy cultivation is at its most pronounced in the Taliban’s heartland in the south, the report showed, especially in regions where troops of the U.S.-led coalition have been withdrawn or are in the process of departing. Full news...
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April 15, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Two mass graves probably dating back to purges under the Soviet-backed communist regime in the 1980s were found in northern Samangan province, residents and officials said on Monday. Believed to hold the remains of 30 people, the discovery in Tapa Aaq Mazar on eastern outskirts of Aibak, the provincial capital, was first reported by a resident who found human remains in his fields while digging soil near his home. Full news...
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April 15, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
AFP: A roadside bomb hit a tractor in southern Afghanistan on Monday, killing seven civilians and wounding four others, officials said. The tractor and trailer hit the anti-vehicle mine in the Mali Zai area of Zabul province, the ministry of interior said in a statement. “Seven civilians were killed and four other civilians were wounded. The wounded were taken to the hospital by Afghan National Police,” the statement said. Full news...
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April 15, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Reuters: How do you collect a 200,000 USD electricity bill from an Afghan warlord? Try cutting him off from the grid. Then turn off your cell phone so he can’t yell at you. General Rashid Dostum - one of Afghanistan’s most powerful militia leaders - found someone else to reconnect him within hours, said Mirwais Alami, the chief commercial officer at Afghanistan’s national power company. Full news...
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April 14, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Killid Group: Years of war have turned Afghanistan into the most mined country in the world. Landmines have killed and maimed tens of thousands. Mahro was 10 years old when exploding ordnance robbed her of her sight, and the use of one hand. Now 28, she lives in Kabul’s Gulbagh area. In 1994, the family was living in Qala-e-Haidar Khan next to Arghandiin Kabul province. They owned cows, and the sale of milk was their means of livelihood. Full news...
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April 13, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Police have detained and charged four men with gang rape of two girls in northern Balkh and western Herat provinces, officials said on Saturday, adding a hunt for another two rapists on the loose was underway. The detainees included a doctor, who allegedly took his 16-year-old patient on excursion from the Civil Hospital in Mazar-i-Sharif to the Shadyan desert, where he and his two friends gang rapped the girl... Full news...
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April 12, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Civil society and human rights activists on Friday expressed their deep concern over increasing murders of women and rising tendency of suicide among them in northern Jawzjan province, where five women were found dead over the past three weeks. Four women were found dead in Aqcha district and one in Shiberghan, the provincial capital, where police had arrested a man for beheading his wife over “moral crime”. Full news...
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April 11, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Two children were killed and as many sustained injuries when a Taliban-fired rocket hit their home in southeastern Paktika province, an official said on Thursday. Elsewhere, a tribal elder was gunned down in northern Takhar province. A stray rocket hit a civilian house in Walus area of Gyani district, killing two children and injuring as many, all from the same family, said Mukhlis Afghan, the governor’s spokesman. Full news...
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April 10, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
BBC News: Afghanistan produces 90 percent of all opiate drugs in the world, but until recently was not a major consumer. Now, out of a population of 35 million, more than a million are addicted to drugs - proportionately the highest figure in the world. Right in the heart of Kabul, on the stony banks of the Kabul River, drug addicts gather to buy and use heroin. It's a place of misery and degradation. Full news...
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April 9, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Associated Press: The 21-year-old Afghan woman said she fled her abusive husband only to be raped at gunpoint by a stranger who was supposed to help her. The man then settled in front of a TV set, putting the gun on a table by his side. Choosing her moment, Mariam grabbed it and shot her assailant in the head, then turned the gun on herself. Full news...
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April 8, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
The Killid Group: Kabul’s seventh district is also called Sarzamine Sokhta in Dari (Burned Land). Nearly everyone here has lost a family member in the successive rounds of blood-letting witnessed by the city. It was 1999. The sun had just gone down in the western sky recalls Mir Abdul Wadood, now a teacher in a school in neighbouring Parwan, when Taleban dragged away and shot 10 family members. Full news...
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April 7, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
Al Jazeera: At least 18 people, including as many as 10 children, have been killed in an air strike in eastern Afghanistan. Afghan officials said strikes happened overnight in Kunar province, during a joint operation between Afghan and NATO troops against Taliban fighters. There were conflicting figures of the death toll with other news agencies. Full news...
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April 5, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
IRIN: Hamidullah, the headmaster of Haji Mir Alam girls’ school in Afghanistan’s northern Kunduz Province, was sitting at his desk in the summer of 2011 when members of a local militia entered the school. The armed men escorted Hamidullah outside the school gate where their commander, Qadirak, was waiting. Then they beat him unconscious with their rifles. Full news...
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April 5, 2013 :: RSS :: Print :: Email
PAN: Two schoolchildren were killed during a clash between security forces and Taliban in the Shinwari district of central Parwan province on Friday, an official said. Hussain Shah Maqsudi, the district police chief, said the children, aged 8 and 10, were killed when the militants ambushed police in the Khinjak area of Kifshan valley. Full news...