In memory of

A brother of Jannat Gul and Awal Khan

Sister-in-law of Jannat Gul, a teacher

Nadia, 17, daughter of Awal Khan

Aimal, 15, son of Awal Khan

Unborn child of Khan’s cousin’s wife

at 00:30 AM of on April 8/9, 2009

in the hamlet of Ali Daya in Gorbaz (Gurbuz) district, west of Khost city. U.S occupation forces attacked the home of Jannat Gul’s brother, Awal Khan, an officer in the Afghan Army who was away serving in Ghazni. According to Gul who spoke with the independent, Pajhwok Afghan News, the night-time assault killed five persons: one of Gul’s brothers, a sister-in-law who was a teacher in a local school (and member of the Khost education department who worked in the CARE-supported school)) and her two chil;dren, and an unborn baby. Agence France Presse reported that Awal Khan lost 4 direct family members in the initial shooting. After the firing, the pregnant wife of Khan’s cousin who lived next door, went outside her home and was shot five times in the abdomen. She was taken to Khost hospital where the 9-month-old fetus was removed. The Khost province health director, Abdul Majeed, said, “She survived but her child died. The Child was hit by the bullets.”

The photo below taken by Pajhwok Afghan shows Gul’s baby (such a photo would NEVER be published by the US mainstream media which refrains from publishing photos of those killed by the U.S. but delights in releasing photos of those killed by “the enemy”).

The photo below by Reuters shows a villager looking at Jannat Gul’s relative’s dead unborn infant:

The site of the deadly U.S. attack was photographed the following morning:

Predictably, the U.S military propaganda forces asserted that US-led forces engaging in a search operation were fired upon and then had killed four “combatants” and injured one linked to the Haqqani and Islamic Jihad. As I have pointed out many times, the first line of defense by the U.S news management team is to assert that enemies were killed, reports which usually get uncritically posted by the U.S mainstream media. As the evidence mounted that this “line of Defense” was untenable, the next step was taken by the US military news management operation: to promise to investigate itself. As Bloomberg reported, “The U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan will probe possible civilian casualties following an operation near the border with Pakistan that killed at least two women whom the military had identified as militants.”

Is this Obama’s “change we can believe in”?

Killed by U.S. occupation forces in a night-time assault