Source : Dawn / 04 Jul 2014

Two polio vaccinators were wounded in Shah Latif town in Sindh's Khairpur district on Friday, DawnNews reported.

Unknown attackers beat up the members of the polio vaccination team with sticks.

Source : AP / 10 Feb 2014

The number of children killed and wounded in Afghanistan’s war jumped by 34 percent last year as the Taliban stepped up attacks across the country and continued to lay thousands of roadside bombs, the United Nations said Saturday.

Overall civilian casualties were up by 14 percent, reversing 2012’s downward trend and making 2013 one of the deadliest years of the 12-year war for civilians.

Source : AP / 29 Jan 2014

A Pakistani university intending to hold a ceremony launching a book by a teenage activist shot by the Taliban called off the event over security concerns in the country’s northwest on Tuesday, government and university officials said.

Sarfraz Khan, director of the Area Study Center of the University of Peshawar, said the ceremony was to launch Malala Yousafzai’s book “I am Malala.” But campus police told him to cancel the event due to safety concerns.

By AFP / 24 Apr 2013

Civilian casualties in Afghanistan rose by almost 30 percent in the first three months of 2013, a U.N. envoy has said, describing a recent Taliban attack on court staff as a “war crime”.

Jan Kubis, U.N. special representative for Afghanistan, said the “troubling” rise, compared to the same period last year, followed a 12 percent drop in civilian casualties over the whole of 2012.

Source : BBC / 19 Feb 2013

The number of civilian casualties in Afghanistan has fallen for the first time in six years, a UN report says.

The UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (Unama) documented 2,754 civilian deaths in 2012, a 12% drop, and 4,805 injuries, a slight rise.

The reduction was attributed to less fighting on the ground, and a decline in suicide attacks and air operations.

But the report also expressed concern about the re-emergence of armed groups, particularly in Afghanistan's north.

By Giuliano Battiston | IPS | 08 Sep 2012

More than a decade after the fall of the Taliban, Afghanistan is still in the midst of an irregular war. Talking peace is difficult because no one quite knows who to talk to.

The efforts gain significance coming ahead of the UN General Assembly meeting Sep. 14 on promoting a culture of peace. As officials talk, more ground-level efforts are being led by civil society groups.

By Spencer Ackerman : Danger Room|Wired.com | 13 Jan 2012

Negotiating a peace deal with the Taliban after 10 years of war in Afghanistan is hard enough. But the stalemated politics of the Guantanamo Bay detention facility risk effectively killing the negotiations before they even have the chance to end the war.

The Taliban leadership has evidently decided it wants to talk peace terms. Among the things it wants as a gesture of good faith from its U.S. adversaries: the release of five detainees from Guantanamo.

By Rizwan Khatik | Timesofummah | 9 Jan 2012

GHALANAI: Veteran politician and former chief of Jamaat-i-Islami Qazi Hussain Ahmad has asked Pakistani Taliban and the government to stop fighting and come to the negotiation table.

By Missy Ryan, Warren Strobel and Mark Hosenball | Reuters | Washington | 19 Dec 2011

After 10 months of secret dialogue with Afghanistan's Taliban insurgents, senior U.S. officials say the talks have reached a critical juncture and they will soon know whether a breakthrough is possible, leading to peace talks whose ultimate goal is to end the Afghan war.