Civilian Casualties

President Hamid Karzai asserted Monday that up to 52 civilians had been killed by NATO rocket fire in southern Afghanistan, a controversy that erupted just as thousands of leaked military documents depicted a pervasive pattern of underreported civilian deaths and injuries in the course of the long conflict. Karzai's claim of civilian casualties last week in Helmand province was sharply disputed by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization force. Provincial authorities said the incident was still being investigated, and that neither the number of deaths nor culpability had been established.

WASHINGTON - President Obama's top counter-terrorism advisor Monday defended using drones to launch missiles against militants in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, saying the growing use of armed unmanned aircraft had saved American lives and caused few civilian casualties. The comments by John Brennan, coming shortly before the first anniversary of the U.S. Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden, marks the first time a senior White House official has spoken at length in public about widely reported but officially secret drone operations.

When Mohamed Ali Dahir, a 21-year-old business administration student, used to board the bus to school, he wasn't worried about being prepared for an exam or arriving late to a lecture. Instead, he braced himself for gunfire or other violence that might erupt while he was traveling the streets of Mogadishu. Even though his bus is clearly marked as school transportation, he said, there were times when even "the government soldiers open fire at us as we return from our schools or college.

Reporting from Camp Pendleton -- Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich and the jurors in his court-martial are all wearing crisp Marine uniforms. All have had combat experience. And all have known Marines killed in combat. But the defendant and those who may decide his fate come from different eras in the Marine Corps mission in Iraq, divided by that November morning in 2005 when 24 unarmed civilians in the town of Haditha were killed by Marines in Wuterich's squad. All eight jurors served after that event, which scandalized much of the American public and shook the Marine Corps.

The stories about the lone civilian injured in a coalition airstrike didn't quite match. A man who claimed to be her father, Rajab Mohammad, said she was 18, and injured when she fell on her back after an errant bomb landed on the family farm. A man who claimed to be her brother said she was struck by shrapnel. A man who claimed to be the gardener said the hospitalized victim was an 8-year-old boy. The holes in the wall looked more like they were caused by small-arms fire than bomb fragments.

Efforts to reduce civilian casualties by restricting U.S. airstrikes and other uses of force in Afghanistan are also sparing American troops from attack, according to a study to be unveiled Tuesday. The study by the National Bureau of Economic Research, being released at the nonpartisan New America Foundation in Washington, undercuts the notion that the military faces a zero-sum choice between protecting its troops and protecting civilians, said one of the authors, Jacob Shapiro of Princeton University.

WASHINGTON - President Obama's top counter-terrorism advisor Monday defended using drones to launch missiles against militants in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, saying the growing use of armed unmanned aircraft had saved American lives and caused few civilian casualties. The comments by John Brennan, coming shortly before the first anniversary of the U.S. Navy SEAL raid that killed Osama bin Laden, marks the first time a senior White House official has spoken at length in public about widely reported but officially secret drone operations.

The U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. David Barno, rejected as insufficient an Afghan government report claiming that 10 civilians were killed in an American raid on suspected Taliban leaders last month in Uruzgan province. President Hamid Karzai had said Interior Ministry officials found that 10 civilians had died, including women and children. But Barno said he still believed his forces had only killed five militants.

Palestinian guerrillas who raided the Israeli coast last week planned to attack army officers at a swimming resort, the guerrillas' leader said in remarks published Sunday. "The main objective of the operation was a resort for senior Israeli army officers," Kuwait's Al Siyassah newspaper quoted Abul Abbas, head of the Iraq-based Palestine Liberation Front, as saying. "Hostage-taking was not part of the operation's program. It was the storming of specific enemy positions . . .

Trying to flee fighting in western Iraq last Tuesday, one family in a taxi tried to speed through a Marine checkpoint. There are few details available about what happened next. The Los Angeles Times says only that the car was fired upon, the driver killed and a mother and daughter wounded. It quotes one Marine saying, "We were just sick to death when that lady got out of the car with her baby." It's tempting to dismiss what happened that night as just something that happens in war.

Ratcheting up pressure on Pakistan's embattled civilian government, the nation's Supreme Court on Tuesday threatened to dismiss Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani from office if he does not revive corruption proceedings against President Asif Ali Zardari. Gilani and Zardari, who heads the ruling Pakistan People's Party, are struggling to survive withering attacks from the country's military and judiciary, both powerful institutions that harbor long-standing animosity for the two civilian leaders.

Amid intensified NATO-led bombing of Libya's capital, the government is alleging mounting civilian casualties and massive damage to homes and civilian infrastructure, though foreign journalists see limited evidence of such devastation. Libyan authorities in recent days have alleged that separate bombing strikes in Tripoli injured an infant girl, heavily damaged a Christian Coptic church and resulted in part of a bomb or missile landing in a semirural neighborhood. International reporters were bused to each scene, but what they learned did not always match the information provided by officials.

A new dispute over civilian deaths erupted Sunday when Afghan officials claimed an errant NATO airstrike had killed 14 people, women and children among them. Western military officials said the incident in Helmand province, which took place late Saturday, was under investigation. Provincial spokesman Daoud Ahmadi said the airstrike was in apparent retaliation for an insurgent attack against a U.S. Marine base in the district of Now Zad. But he said the compound that was hit contained residential structures.

Under mounting pressure to keep its massive budget in check, the Pentagon is looking to cheaper, smaller weapons to wage war in the 21st century. A new generation of weaponry is being readied in clandestine laboratories across the nation that puts a priority on pintsized technology that would be more precise in warfare and less likely to cause civilian casualties. Increasingly, the Pentagon is being forced to discard expensive, hulking, Cold War-era armaments that exact a heavy toll on property and human lives.

The doctors rushed through a white outdoor tent where several pale, bloodied men were being operated on. Inside the Hikma hospital, it was a similar scene. One patient, blood dripping from his mouth, was being propped up by two companions. Nearby rooms were packed with seemingly catatonic men, their faces swollen and bruised. Seventeen people had died Sunday in Misurata, the doctors said, many of them victims of rocket attacks from government forces loyal to longtime Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi.

The stories about the lone civilian injured in a coalition airstrike didn't quite match. A man who claimed to be her father, Rajab Mohammad, said she was 18, and injured when she fell on her back after an errant bomb landed on the family farm. A man who claimed to be her brother said she was struck by shrapnel. A man who claimed to be the gardener said the hospitalized victim was an 8-year-old boy. The holes in the wall looked more like they were caused by small-arms fire than bomb fragments.

THE NEWS IS filled these days with reports of civilian casualties, comparative civilian body counts and criticism of Israel, along with Hezbollah, for causing the deaths, injuries and "collective punishment" of civilians. But just who is a "civilian" in the age of terrorism, when militants don't wear uniforms, don't belong to regular armies and easily blend into civilian populations? We need a new vocabulary to reflect the realities of modern warfare.

Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd on Friday entered the fierce, running debate over British media coverage of the Gulf War, declaring that there is a "good deal of concern" about journalistic reports from Baghdad. "There is a very strong feeling in the country," said Hurd, that television stories from Baghdad have supported the Iraqi line on Wednesday's bombing of a structure in the capital. The Iraqis claim the bombing resulted in the deaths of hundreds of civilians.

After losing ground to government forces for weeks, Libyan rebels based in the eastern city of Benghazi showed signs Thursday of regaining the momentum against Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi, whose brutal crackdown on protesters opposed to his four-decade rule has sparked civil warfare. Rebel spokesman Col. Ahmed Omar Bani said some government fighters in the front-line city of Ajdabiya had lost contact with their commanders and were negotiating to withdraw and head west toward government-controlled territory.

Col. Moammar Kadafi's forces intensified attacks in opposition-held cities, creating panic in the western town of Misurata, even as U.S. and allied warplanes broadened their airstrikes across Libya, U.S. military officers and witnesses said Wednesday. Despite the increasing presence of allied aircraft overhead, Kadafi has rushed to put down the remaining pockets of a rebellion that has threatened his rule. In Misurata, government forces resumed their assault Wednesday evening despite airstrikes for the second day on the outskirts of the insurgent-held city.