Middle East, Civilian | featured news

Tens of thousands of demonstrators take to the streets outside Damascus, in Homs and elsewhere in response to the lethal military assaults centered in the besieged city of Hama. The growing civilian toll intensifies international condemnation of the Syrian regime.

Syrian tanks and helicopters opened fire and killed at least two civilians as the military advanced through a series of villages in northwestern Syria on Thursday, a push that sent residents running for the hills, several villagers said in phone calls with CNN.

Syrian military forces are poised to enter another northern town, while an increasing number of civilians are fleeing to Turkey to escape the military crackdown on anti-government protesters.

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.

More than 220 Iraqi civilians were subjected to "systemic abuse", including torture, by British soldiers and interrogators in Iraq, the High Court was told on Friday.

Platoon members charged with dismembering and photographing corpses, as well as hoarding a skull and other human bones, Army sources reveal.

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.

U.S. Marines and Afghan soldiers advanced through poppy fields of Marjah on Saturday under withering gunfire from Taliban fighters shooting from mudbrick homes and compounds where families huddled in terror.

Pakistani jets pounded militant hide-outs along the Afghan border overnight as hundreds of thousands of civilians fled South Waziristan ahead of an expected government offensive, officials said Wednesday.