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<p>Russia claimed on Monday that an attack by Kyiv’s forces on the separatist stronghold of Donetsk in eastern Ukraine had left 23 people dead, with the military accusing Kyiv of committing a “war crime”.</p><p>Moscow accused Ukraine’s army of firing a Tochka-U missile at a residential area in Donetsk, in one of the most serious attacks on the city since Russia sent troops into Ukraine more than two weeks ago.</p>

On August 6, 1945, 30-year-old U.S. Air Force pilot Col. Paul W. Tibbets Jr. took to the sky in the Enola Gay, his Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bomber. His destination, the Japanese city of Hiroshima, was not an especially notable target. His payload, however, a single bomb nicknamed “Little Boy,” would change the course of history. True watershed moments in history are rare — the agricultural revolution is one such example, as was the Battle of Salamis, the advent of Jesus Christ, and the fall of Western Rome. Yet in the last 1,500 years, no two distinct epochs of time...

PROGRESS WATCH   Two decades after a landmark treaty, and despite an overall increase due largely to Syria’s civil war, the majority of affected countries recorded fewer deaths linked to land mines and cluster munitions. In January 1997, Diana, princess of Wales, famously walked through an active minefield in Angola to raise awareness of the ongoing threats posed by land mines. During her visit, with the help of a removal expert, Diana detonated one of the remaining mines. “One down, 17 million to go,” she said while pushing the button. This year marked the 20th anniversary of the death of...

Pentagon officials, who pride themselves on the care they take to avoid civilian casualties, have watched with growing alarm as Saudi airstrikes have hit what the U.N. this week called "dozens of public buildings," including hospitals, schools, residential areas and mosques. The U.N. said at least 364 civilians have been killed in the campaign. Although U.S. personnel don't pick the bombing targets, Americans are working beside Saudi military officials to check the accuracy of target lists in a joint operations center in Riyadh, defense officials said. The Pentagon has expedited delivery of GPS-guided "smart" bomb kits to the Saudi air...

A staggering amount of so-called “civilian casualties” in Gaza were probably Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists, the New York Times admits for the first time this week, challenging the routine acceptance of casualty figures provided by the Hamas-run health ministry. The report critically examines the data from the Palestinian Health Ministry, the official data center at Shifa Hospital that releases the names and statistics for casualties in Gaza—and is run by a known Hamas terrorist, Dr. Ashraf Al-Qurda. The PHM lists 1,865 “martyrs” from “Israeli aggression” since July 6—two days before Operation Protective Edge officially began; of those, 429 were...

The Pentagon has loosened its guidelines on avoiding civilian casualties during drone strikes, modifying instructions from requiring military personnel to “ensure” civilians are not targeted to encouraging service members to “avoid targeting” civilians. ... Despite Mr. Obama’s pledge for more transparency on drone strikes, the administration “continues to answer legitimate questions and criticisms by saying, ‘We can’t really talk about this,’”

THE most effective weapon terrorists have found to wield against us isn't the headline-grabbing suicide bomber or even the deadly roadside bomb, the IED. Such weapons can harm us, but they can't stop us. Terror's super-weapon is the lie. Lying about civilian casualties is the one sure way to impede or even halt US (or Israeli) operations, to force such tight restrictions on our troops that they can't win. The casualty con's so effective as both propaganda and tactic that terrorists everywhere have adopted the technique. It's been so successful that our enemies long ago transitioned to the next phase:...

HAMAS is like the Bill Clinton of terrorist groups. I am not suggesting that the terror group needs a lesson about what to do with Cuban cigars, it more a matter of twisting phrases and honesty. Or to put it a different way when it comes to Hamas Civilian casualty numbers, it depends what "IS" is. The casualty numbers reported by the press and Used by Hamas are compiled by Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR). The PCHR numbers are seriously flawed. One of the problems with their figures is that they classify as Civilians, casualties that most reasonable people...

A NATO official on Friday said it was investigating the claims of civilian casualties but insisted any blame would lie with "irresponsible" militants for launching attacks in the first place.

Though I find a sudden deep concern by some for the civilian population of Lebanon quite moving, I find the slaughtered Israeli civilian just as moving as well as the kidnapped Israeli soldiers being held hostage. A race and nation facing genocidal maniacs certainly has the right to defend itself and to try to crush those who seek its extermination. Israel has not specifically targeted civilians and in fact has done as much or more to try to spare the civilian population than we have in Iraq. Before their recent raids to destroy Hezbollah outposts and strongholds they foretold and...

Everyone has heard of the “killings at Haditha,” even though the military investigation of what happened there is still underway. Has anyone heard of the “killings at St. Lo” in July, 1944? A comparison of the New York Times coverage of those two events is instructive. A Google News search of Haditha + killings + New York Times yields 891 hits as of Sunday noon. The articles on this subject in the Times are driving the national and international news in all media on this subject. The Times and its reporters are cited in most of these articles. But what...

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates -- A top U.S. Air Force general said Sunday that reports of civilian casualties in Iraq as a result of American military action were exaggerated. "I would tell you first off I don't believe most of it and I am very much aware that some of that has been staged," said Lt. Gen. Walter E. Buchanan III, Commander of the 9th U.S. Air Force and U.S. Central Command Air Forces. Buchanan, speaking to The Associated Press on the sidelines on the annual Dubai Air Show, said the U.S. Air Force was doing everything necessary to minimize...

LONDON, Jan 29 (Reuters) - The BBC apologised on Saturday for erroneously reporting that U.S.-led and Iraqi forces may be responsible for the deaths of 60 percent of Iraqi civilians killed in conflict over the last six months. The British broadcaster said on Friday in broadcasts and a news statement that its Panorama investigative show would air a report on Sunday citing "confidential" records from Iraq's health ministry to support the contention. Iraq's health minister said the BBC misinterpreted the statistics it had received and had ignored statements from the ministry clarifying the figures. "Today, the Iraqi Ministry of Health...

The Western media in pre-election Iraq, Peter Jennings for example, are doing all they can to aid and abet Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's call for the Iraqi people to stay away from the polls on Sunday. Fortunately for Iraq and the world, there's not much either of them can do. Jennings, after all, is hardly a household word in Baghdad, and Zarqawi's latest rhetorical rant has placed him in clear opposition not just to the American occupation of Iraq, but the Iraqi people as well. After all, the quickest and surest way to get the Americans out of the country is...

The UK Government will "examine with very great care" claims around 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the US-led invasion, Jack Straw has said. A study in the Lancet said the majority of the victims were women and children killed due to military activity. The UK foreign secretary told the BBC's Today programme that another independent estimate of civilian deaths was around 15,000. The study by US and Iraq researchers was led by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, US.

A beloved if misguided cousin forwarded me this idiotic "Not One Damn Dime" e-mail touting a national anti-war protest on January 20, to wit: We support the troops but feel that the polititians need to know that they need to find a way to end this fast! Maybe this will help get them the message. Not One Damn Dime -- Spread the word! This might be the closest we could come to a general strike in this country and could be powerful symbolically if it were wide spread... Not One Damn Dime Day - Jan 20, 2005 Since our religious...

WASHINGTON (AP) - As a week of mounting U.S. casualties in Iraq drew to a close, the Bush administration pledged Friday to take the fight to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and other Iraqi resisters. "We're worried, but I am not panicked about it," said Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage of the upsurge in resistance to U.S. occupation. "They've chosen to fight," Armitage told the semiofficial Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram. "We'll fight. And they will see that we understand strength as well." The cleric's militia has been in battle with U.S. and other coalition forces this week. Armitage dismissed the al-Sadr...

The revelation in the April 25, 2001 New York Times Magazine that former senator Bob Kerrey murdered innocent women and children in Vietnam has exposed a sharp division in American public opinion over questions of military ethics. Kerrey admitted to having participated, as a young Navy SEALs lieutenant, in a massacre of 13 unarmed Vietnamese women and children in the tiny village of Thanh Phong. Exactly how the incident, which occurred in February of 1969, took place still isn't clear. According to Kerrey, his SEAL commando squad mistakenly believed they were under fire; but one of the members of that...

After the bombs stopped falling, Faith Fippinger ventured out into Baghdad. At a hospital, she found a man weeping beside his dying wife. Their six children had been killed in the attack, too, Fippinger said. When the man asked Fippinger where she was from, she told him the truth — the United States, which was dropping the bombs pounding the city. Not denying her citizenship was something she had sworn to do during her time in Iraq, Fippinger said. She wanted the Iraqis to know there were Americans who did not approve of the war on Iraq. "I would say...

For the past three years, no matter how monstrous the Palestinian attack on Israeli civilians, the Minneapolis Star Tribune has consistently refused to apply the word 'terrorism.' One of the paper's editors explained their 'evenhanded' position in February, 2002: "In the case of the term 'terrorist,' other words -- 'gunman,' 'separatist' and 'rebel,' for example -- may be more precise and less likely to be viewed as judgmental. We also take extra care to avoid the term 'terrorist' in articles about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict because of the emotional and heated nature of that dispute." Now, suddenly, the largest paper in...