UK army killed 64 children in Afghanistan between 2006 to 2014- Report

By Hans Ngala (article originally appeared on http://Aljazeera.com with ancillary reporting from the BBC)

The British army killed 64 children in Afghanistan between the years 2006 and 2014 a new report has revealed. According to the report published by UK-based charity, Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), the British army went on to pay compensation of $1,894 (about (1.2m CFA) for each child killed.
The AOAV report also proved that the British army had lied about the number of children that had earlier died as a result of its war on terror in Afghanistan – with the army having only reported 16 child deaths years prior. According to AOAV, the number of children killed by British forces could even be as high as 135.
Most of the children killed were reported to be on average around the age of 6 and most died as a result of airstrikes by British forces.
According to Aljazeera “Families attempting to claim compensation for the loss of a relative were expected to show evidence, including birth certificates and interviews with British personnel to confirm there was no affiliation with the Taliban”.
The recent revelations in AOAV’s report bring to mind the case of Australia-born Julian Assange who was viewed by the US and its Western allies as a “traitor” for exposing the excesses of US soldiers in Iraq. In 2010, Assange leaked a highly classified video that showed US soldiers shooting 18 civilians from a helicopter in Baghdad, Iraq.
In the same year, Assange’s Wikileaks company published hundreds of thousands of documents leaked by former US Army intelligence analyst, Chelsea Manning.
They revealed how the US military had killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents during the war in Afghanistan.
Files from the Iraq war showed that 66,000 civilians had been killed and that prisoners had been tortured by Iraqi forces.