Talk about collateral damage, 11 children and a woman killed in NATO airstrike against Taliban commanders

[Civilians continue to die from wanton aggression of NATO forces and yet we wonder why the Afghan population is against us...]

file photo; credit: huffingtonpost

• Local officials said the strike hit houses in the Kunar province, Afghanistan
• Said the woman and children died when their homes collapsed on them
• Six insurgents, including two senior Taliban leaders, died in the strike
• International Security Assistance Force said it is assessing incident

By DAILY MAIL
April 7, 2013

A Nato airstrike killed at least 11 children yesterday during an operation targeting Taliban commanders. At least one woman also died in the strike and more than six others were injured in the strike on a village in Shigal district in Kunar province, on the Pakistani border. Six insurgents, including two senior Taliban leaders, were killed in the attack, the Interior Ministry said.

The Interior Ministry did not mention any civilian casualties but Wasefullah Wasefi, a spokesman for the provincial governor, said civilian homes had been hit during an air attack.
'Eleven children and a woman were killed when an air strike hit their houses,' Wasefi said.
Mohammad Zahir Safai, the Shigal district chief, said the woman and the children were killed when the houses collapsed on them.

A spokesman for the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) said they were aware of reports of civilian casualties and were assessing the incident. He said: 'No Isaf personnel were involved on the ground, but Isaf provided fire support from the air, killing several insurgents.

'We are also aware of reports of several civilians injured from the engagement, but no reports of civilian deaths. Isaf takes all reports of civilian casualties seriously, and we are currently assessing the incident. 'The air support was called in by coalition forces - not Afghans - and was used to engage insurgent forces in areas away from structures, according to our reporting.'

Tribal elder Haji Malika Jan told the BBC that fighting began early on Saturday and lasted for at least seven hours.

A Reuters journalist said they saw the bodies of 11 children when they were taken to Safai's office in protest by their families and other villagers on Sunday. The journalist did not see the body of a women and Safai said residents told him of the death. Women's bodies are not displayed, according to custom.

Wasefi also said an American civilian adviser to the Afghan intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security, had also been killed in the operation. He said it had lasted several hours. The Ministry of Interior said the two dead Taliban commanders, Ali Khan and Gul Raouf, planned and organised attacks in Kunar.

Civilian deaths have been a long-running source of friction between Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who banned Afghan troops from calling for air strikes. About ten women and children were killed in February last year in a Nato air strike in the same area of Afghanistan.

The deaths came on the same day that a car bomb killed five Americans, including three U.S. soldiers, a young diplomat and a U.S. Defence Department contractor, in the southern province of Zabul.

“Playground War – Libya” – Documentary (MUST WATCH)

Global Civilian for Peace
By Lizzie Phelan
     

The newly released documentary by Journeyman TV, Playground War – Libya, is an extremely important and heartbreaking insight into the realities of NATO’s war on Libya.

Shot in Sirte, the city that was obliterated during the last weeks of NATO’s bombing campaign, the interviewees who participated very bravely give an extremely honest account of the suffering being endured first and foremost by the primary victims of this aggression, Libya’s children.

It shows that the result of this war, like every war and intervention the west has been involved in, has been the division of people who previous to that intervention lived side by side as brothers and sisters, in peace and unity. In Syria, if western support for the insurgency continues, Libya and history shows that the result will be the same.

As a reporter that witnessed Libya transform from a prosperous, well developed country, that provided a good quality of life for its citizens – a fact that the children in this documentary allude to when they repeatedly remark that they wish life would return to how it was before the war – to a country destroyed beyond comprehension, to now being in Nicaragua, which went through a similar experience, the comments from one of the featured families that supported the western backed insurgency against the Jamahiriyah lead by Muammar Gaddafi, were particularly interesting. They remarked how the revolution that they had supported had delivered them no benefits, and that they too were suffering gravely from the war. In Nicaragua, many of the ordinary working class people that fought with the US backed “Contras”, against the FSLN government in the 1980s are now supporting and working with the FSLN government that was reelected in 2007. The reason for this is primarily that after having lived under 16 years of US backed neoliberal government during the 1990s and early 2000s, and like this Libyan family, far from receiving any benefits instead they suffered greatly, they have experienced first hand betrayal by the forces they once supported

It is a profound tragedy to see a similar process playing out amongst the supporters of the NATO campaign in Libya, and Nicaragua provides many lessons in terms of reconciling a bitterly divided society as exists in Libya today.

This video shows how children who understand little of the politics of Libyan history and the war, are of course naturally inclined to support the positions of their parents. It is essential for their future, not that the past is glorified but that they all receive an honest education about Libya’s history, the history of imperialism, and the political reasons that lead to the west’s support for the devastation that they are now living through. Only with such an education can they critically understand their parents positions, what they are living through (e.g. why the NTC will not deliver funds to rebuild their lives, as the local NTC official states in this documentary) and make judgments about what is best for their and their own children’s future.

There is one highly erroneous claim in this documentary, and that is that the “revolution”/insurgency “succeeded” in Sirte. The reality is, and this is well documented in press coverage from the time, that the insurgency did not succeed in Sirte, and this is why it was obliterated to the extent the documentary shows. It was impossible for the insurgency to succeed in Sirte, and it only was able to crush the support of Gaddafi after the most powerful military force on earth ever know to man, NATO, attacked the city and Green Resistance ruthlessly for almost two months.

The bravery of the participants in this documentary in speaking out honestly about their suffering, at a time when the gun rules, should not be underestimated. Hundreds of thousands of people have had to flee the country and are languishing in makeshift detention centres inside Libya, where torture is routine, simply for their political positions being known.


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NATO 'covers up' Libyan death shame (RT News)

RT NEWS
Published: 19 March, 2012, 14:07
Edited: 20 March, 2012, 01:24

People stand around the coffins of 28 people, who Libyan government officials say were killed after their houses were bombed by NATO forces, in Majar, south of Zlitan, 160 km (99 miles) east of Tripoli, August 9, 2011. (Reuters / Caren Firouz)

NATO has failed to investigate scores of civilian deaths incurred during its seven-month military campaign in Libya, Amnesty international says. NATO expressed its “regret” for civilian casualties but has taken no steps to initiate an investigation.

• View the report from Amnesty International, called Libya: The forgotten victims of NATO Strikes

"It is deeply disappointing that more than four months since the end of the military campaign, victims and relatives of those killed by NATO airstrikes remain in the dark about what happened and who was responsible" said Donatella Rovera, the Senior Crisis Response Adviser at Amnesty International on Monday.

“Legally, [conducting an investigation was] NATO’s responsibility. Some of the information is only in the hands of NATO,” she added, speaking to RT. “As for the new Libyan authorities, unfortunately, they have shown little or no interest in the plight of the victims of NATO strikes.”
Rovera stressed that if NATO is indeed dedicated to the protection of civilians, then it cannot simply “brush aside the deaths of scores of civilians with some vague statement of regret.”

The Libyan Health Minister of the National Transitional Council estimated that about 30,000 were killed during the conflict.

Amnesty International appealed to NATO on March 5, urging them to undertake a thorough investigation into the civilian deaths documented by the NGO. Furthermore, they asked for the findings of any subsequent investigation to be publicly disclosed and compensation to be given to the victims’ families.

Amnesty said that NATO had not even tried to contact the bereaved families of the victims killed in the strikes.

NATO’s response on March 15 did not account for any of the cases of civilian causalities raised by Amnesty International, but instead offered this statement:

“While NATO did everything possible to minimize the risk to civilians, in a complex military operation that risk cannot be reduced to zero. NATO deeply regrets any harm that may have been caused by those air strikes.”

Amnesty International published its findings in a report entitled “Libya: The forgotten victims of NATO Strikes” on Monday.

The document outlines the findings of the NGO’s investigations into civilian casualties of the NATO airstrikes, highlighting numerous occasions when “insufficient precautions were taken in attacks that targeted possible combatants staying at civilian homes.”

The investigation cites 55 named civilians, including women and children who were killed in airstrikes in Tripoli, Zlitan, Majer, Sirte and Brega. Moreover, the NGO found no evidence indicating the strikes carried out on private properties targeted homes being used for military purposes.

While the NGO accepts that NATO did take precautions to avoid civilian deaths, it underlined the fact that this did not absolve them from conducting full investigations. The object of the enquiries should establish whether international law was violated during the air strikes.

During its seven-month campaign that ended in the ouster of Colonel Gadaffi, NATO executed around 9,600 strike operations that destroyed 5,900 targets.

Coalition forces began their campaign in Libya in March 2011, saying they had a responsibility to protect civilians suffering in the Libyan civil war. The campaign backed by 19 different countries was headed by France, who worked closely with the UK and US.

Additional Info:
View the NATO crimes committed in Libya (WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES)