Afghan Civilians

Responding to reports that a U.S. serviceman killed 16 Afghan civilians in a shooting rampage in a village near Kandahar, President Obama called Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday to express his “shock and sadness.” Obama said in a statement that he was “deeply saddened by the reported killing and wounding of Afghan civilians.” “I offer my condolences to the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives, and to the...

KABUL, Afghanistan - Tackling one of the major sources of friction in Washington's tenuous relationship with Kabul, U.S. officials on Sunday signed an agreement that gives Afghan authorities legal and operational oversight over nighttime raids carried out by American troops - a tactic that has been successful against Taliban insurgents but deeply unpopular with Afghan citizens. The pact with Afghan officials was hailed at a signing ceremony in Kabul, the capital, as an important steppingstone toward an overarching strategic partnership agreement that will govern the relationship between the two countries after U.S. troops withdraw at the end of 2014.

Last year was the deadliest yet for Afghan civilians in nearly a decade of warfare, the United Nations said Wednesday in a report that painted a picture of growing insecurity in cities and towns across the country. The U.N. mission in Afghanistan put the number of civilians killed last year at 2,777, a 15% increase from the previous year. About three-quarters of those deaths were caused by insurgents, the report said. Most of the civilian casualties were capriciously random in nature, with hundreds of people dying in suicide attacks or roadside bombings.

In her first media interview, Karilyn Bales - wife of the Army staff sergeant accused of murdering 17 Afghan civilians - says it's hard for her to believe her husband could have committed the killings. She also says she didn't notice behavior indicating that he could be suffering from post-traumatic  stress disorder. “This is not him. It's not him,” she told NBC's "Today" show in an interview near her home in Washington state. She described the 38-year-old soldier as a man who loved children and who wanted to avoid further combat deployments in order to spend more time with his own two kids.

A bomb planted by a road killed 15 Afghan civilians Saturday, including eight children, in a volatile southern district where American forces last year made a major push to dislodge the Taliban, provincial officials said. Arghandab district, just outside the south's main city of Kandahar, was the scene of heavy fighting in the summer and fall of 2010. Military progress in the south has been touted as a sign of the success of last year's U.S. troop surge, but insurgents in recent weeks have been filtering back into some key districts, seeking to reclaim former strongholds.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- The pace of Afghan civilian deaths accelerated sharply in the first half of this year, increasing by 31 percent, with women and children bearing the brunt of spiraling violence, the United Nations said Tuesday. However, the Western military and its Afghan allies were responsible for a significantly smaller proportion of the deaths than previously, with insurgents blamed for roughly three-quarters of the fatalities, the U.N. mission in Afghanistan said. Most of the civilian casualties -- nearly 1,300 dead and almost 2,000 injured -- were caused by improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, which are also the principal killer of NATO troops.

Taking on Tiger Re "Gloria Allred's new feminism," Column, Feb. 23 Sandy Banks is right-on regarding Gloria Allred taking the case of one of Tiger Woods' alleged lovers. Volumes could be written by and about the millions of women who have fallen for the sweet words of their married lovers, believing the fantasy they will one day be No. 1. It is a story as old as the ages. Allred should know that women in this position have no rights. In the past I have held Allred in high regard, as she championed the cause of women who have been mistreated through no fault of their own -- but she has this case all wrong.

An Army staff sergeant who allegedly gunned down civilians in southern Afghanistan this month will be charged Friday with 17 counts of murder, two U.S. officials said Thursday evening. Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, 38, was on his fourth combat deployment when the killings occurred. He is also likely to be charged with six counts of attempted murder and assault, one of the officials said. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the charges had not been made public.

  The Army staff sergeant held in the killing of 16 Afghan civilians initially told other soldiers that he had shot several Afghan men outside a U.S. combat outpost in southern Afghanistan on March 11, but did not mention that a dozen women and children were among the dead, according to a senior U.S. official briefed on the case. Staff Sgt. Robert Bales had "indicated to his buddies that he had taken out some military-aged males," the senior official told The Times. Soldiers frequently use that term to denote insurgents.

Reporting from Lake Tapps, Wash., and Norwood, Ohio For those who grew up with him, Robert Bales seemed to have a place reserved on easy street. Captain of the football team and president of the sophomore class at his Ohio high school, Bales after just three years of college had an oceanfront condo in Florida. He was also pulling in more than $100,000 a year as a financial advisor. His investment work ran into trouble, though, and when the Sept. 11 attacks came, Bales felt what friends said was an irresistible call.

There are days here, in these war-haunted times, when it seems that death might come in any guise, and from any direction. From a bomb buried in the earth. From the sky. From a rusted motorbike haphazardly parked in a busy marketplace, with no one paying it and its deadly package any notice. Or from a soldier who breaks down doors in the dead of night, with murder in mind. Despite a shared sorrow and bewilderment, a jarring disparity has emerged in the way Americans and Afghans view the killings of 16 villagers in rural Kandahar province, allegedly at the hands of a lone U.S. Army staff sergeant named Robert Bales.

Relations between Afghanistan and the United States suffered another stunning setback Sunday when a rogue American soldier walked off his base in southern Afghanistan and went on a shooting spree that left 16 Afghan civilians dead, according to American and Afghan officials. The attacks - in which nearly all of the victims were women and children killed while they were sleeping - come less than a month after American military personnel were found to have burned Korans at Bagram air base, and two months after a video surfaced showing four U.S. Marines urinating on the corpses of three Taliban fighters.

Responding to reports that a U.S. serviceman killed 16 Afghan civilians in a shooting rampage in a village near Kandahar, President Obama called Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Sunday to express his “shock and sadness.” Obama said in a statement that he was “deeply saddened by the reported killing and wounding of Afghan civilians.” “I offer my condolences to the families and loved ones of those who lost their lives, and to the...

The clusters of bodies heaped in a rural Kandahar hamlet have given rise to the inevitable question: Are U.S.-Afghan relations now too tainted for the nations to move ahead as allies in this war? On Sunday, a lone American serviceman slipped away from his base in southern Afghanistan before dawn and went on a methodical house-to-house shooting spree in a nearby scatter of Afghan homes, killing 16 people as they slept, nearly all of them women and children, according to Afghan officials who visited the scene.

An Army sergeant so sharp he looked like a recruiting poster — who had skulls tattooed on his leg said to represent the people he'd killed in Iraq — was convicted of three counts of premeditated murder Thursday in the most gruesome war crimes case to emerge from the war in Afghanistan. Staff Sgt. Calvin Gibbs, 26, was also found guilty of keeping decomposing fingers, leg bones and a tooth as trophies from corpses, and organizing the gang beating of a fellow soldier he feared would report the rampant hashish use in what Army officials say was an "out of control" platoon.