Wars, Civilian Deaths | featured news

The coalition has told the rebels that they are no less subject to bombardment by NATO planes than pro-Qaddafi forces if they endanger civilians.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said on Tuesday that fighting in Libya would soon decline significantly, and he attributed criticism of the American-led military campaign to the “outright lies” by the Qaddafi government about civilian casualties.

The head of the Arab League has criticized international strikes on Libya, saying they caused civilian deaths.

The attack on the boys amounted to one of the worst cases of mistaken killings of children by foreign-led forces in the Afghanistan war.

The medical team had been providing eye care to villagers in a remote area of northern Afghanistan. Insurgents claim responsibility for one of the worst attacks on civilians in the war.

The number of civilians killed by violence in Iraq almost doubled in July from June, a sign that insurgents may be trying to exploit political tensions after an election that produced no outright winner.

The American military has not yet confirmed the deaths from Friday’s strike. It would be the worst civilian toll in an attack in almost a year.

Some 90,000 leaked U.S. military records posted online Sunday amount to a blow-by-blow account of six years of the Afghanistan war, including unreported incidents of Afghan civilian killings.

Western military officials acknowledge that none of those in a car fired on by soldiers had links to the insurgency.

A NATO airstrike in southern Afghanistan has killed 33 people after an aircraft fired on civilians mistakenly thought to be insurgents, the Afghan government said on Monday.