A report by the United Nations Committee of the Rights Of The Child is causing a stir in Washington and Brussels. The report claims the US and NATO bombing campaign has lead to the deaths of hundreds of Afghan children in recent years.

Attacks by U.S. military forces in Afghanistan, including air strikes, have reportedly killed hundreds of children over the last four years, according to the U.N. body monitoring the rights of children. The Geneva-based Committee on the Rights of the Child said the casualties were “due notably to reported lack of precautionary measures and indiscriminate use of force.”

It was reviewing a range of U.S. policies affecting children for the first time since 2008 — the last year of the Bush administration and the year Barack Obama was first elected president.

The increasingly fruitless war in Afghanistan has claimed thousands of American lives but the Afghan civilian death toll has been mostly withheld from American media coverage. That suppression by the establishment media has lead to little reflection by the America public on the tactics being used in the ill-fated war. Now the UN has decided to weigh in.

In its report, the U.N. committee told the United States to “take concrete and firm precautionary measures and prevent indiscriminate use of force to ensure that no further killings and maiming of civilians, including children, take place.”

Whether this report influences the Obama Administration is unknown. There have already been an estimated 17,000 Afghan civilians killed so far.

Photo by U.S Military under Public Domain