Mohammad Awan

The mother of a South Yorkshire soldier who was killed in Afghanistan has said too many servicemen are dying in a conflict which is “not our war”.

The funeral of Sharon Leverett’s son, Trooper James Leverett, will take place at Sheffield Cathedral later.

Trooper Leverett, from Rawmarsh, died earlier this month while serving with The Royal Dragoon Guards, Viking Group, D (The Green Horse) Squadron.

He died just a couple of months ahead of the birth of his first child.

Remembering her son, Mrs Leverett said she did not feel she was qualified to make a fully informed judgment about the UK’s role in Afghanistan.

She said: “Obviously I don’t think they should be there, but that’s my personal opinion.

“I don’t think this was ever our war in the first place. But they’re out there. They’re doing their job.
‘Support them’

“They’re doing what they can. They’re doing their best and we’ve just got to support them in that.”

She added: “Obviously something does need to be sorted because we’re losing too many people out there.

“There’s too many families going through what I’m going through.

“I do think we shouldn’t be there, I do think this is not our war.”

Mrs Leverett, 37, said her son had joined the Army when he was 18, and knew he had made the right decision despite not looking forward to going to Afghanistan.

She described the Army as being one of his “three families”, saying: “He had us, he had his friends and he had the Army, so he was lucky.”

She said he had been “over the moon” when he had found out he was going to be a father.

His girlfriend Tiffany Lound discovered their baby was going to be a boy the day after the family received the news about Trooper Leverett’s death.

The baby is due in September.

She said: “Obviously I’m proud because he was doing what he wanted to do.

“Although I knew he didn’t want to go out there in the first place, he knew that that was what he joined for and he did it and that’s kept me strong really.”

Mrs Leverett said her son had been very close to his family and also loved his Staffordshire bull terrier, Bullseye.

He lived with his mother, stepfather Tony Weighell and his three brothers and had planned to get a house with his girlfriend next year.

Earlier this week, it was revealed that Trooper Leverett left Miss Lound a letter to be opened only if he was killed in action.

It told her not to cry and to put all her energy into bringing up their baby.

Trooper Leverett was killed by an improvised explosive device while on a vehicle patrol in the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand Province.

He was helping to secure a route under construction between Lashkar Gah and Gereshk.

After his death, Lt Col James Carr-Smith, the Commanding Officer of The Royal Dragoon Guards, said he had been “a model soldier”.

Maj Denis James, the officer commanding his squadron, described Trooper Leverett as a “man of the highest quality”.

WikiLeaks has posted a video on its website which it claims shows the killing of civilians by the US military in Baghdad in 2007.

The website’s organisers say they were given the footage, which they say comes from cameras on US Apache helicopters.

They say they decrypted it, but would not reveal who gave it to them.

The WikiLeaks site campaigns for freedom of information and posts leaked documents online. So far there has been no official Pentagon response.

Dozens were said to be sheltering in the village from nearby fighting

International forces in Afghanistan say they are urgently investigating reports as many as 45 civilians died in an air strike in Helmand province on Friday.

Nato’s initial investigation found no evidence, but a BBC journalist visiting Regey village spoke to several people who said they had seen the incident.

At the time, dozens were sheltering in the village from nearby fighting.

A significant civilian loss of life would be rare this year as a new policy of restraint has reduced casualties.

‘Lying asleep’

Witnesses said the attack had come in daylight as dozens sheltered from fighting in nearby Joshani.

Mohammed Khan, a boy aged about 16, said helicopters had circled over the village before the incident. He said that he had warned other children to take cover.

But his mother told him not to worry them. He went further away and was shielded by a wall that saved his life when the attack started.

“I heard the sound of the rocket land on our house. I rushed in screaming with my father and saw bodies lying in the dust… I found I was even standing on a dead body.”

One of the bodies was his brother.

“He had been lying asleep in the afternoon when they were killed,” Mohammed said.

After the attack relatives and neighbours came to assist in digging out the dead and taking the injured to hospital.

Sher Mohammed said that the owner of the house had been his cousin. He said it had taken until late into the night to dig out the bodies. Rescuers buried 39 and believed six were left under the rubble, he added.

The bodies were buried at daylight. Haji Rahim could not contain his tears. He said that after a sleepless night, he and other villagers had gone to talk to a Nato patrol.

Rescuers said they had buried 39 victims from the attack

He said: “They can see something as small as an insect just four inches on the ground, so how were they not able to see all of those women and children when they bombed them?”

For several months there has been a significant reduction in civilian casualties and very few air strikes under a new policy of restraint ordered by Gen Stanley McChrystal.

He was forced from his post recently after talking too frankly to journalists.

A spokesman for the international forces, Lt Col Chris Hughes, said: “A preliminary investigation by [Nato’s] Isaf forces and the provincial governor, which included a meeting with local elders, gives no indication of a mass casualty incident caused by coalition forces in Sangin.”

But he added: “We take allegations of civilian casualties very seriously. We go to great measures to avoid civilian casualties in the course of operations. The safety of the Afghan people is very important to the International Security Assistance Forces.”

BBCNEWS.

TAMPA, Fla. (June 17) — A controversial nonlethal weapon that uses microwave energy to create intense pain is being considered for use in Afghanistan, AOL News has learned.

An Air Force military officer and a civilian employee at the Air Force Research Laboratory told AOL News at an industry conference here that the Active Denial System, which heats the top layer of skin via millimeter waves, was in Afghanistan for testing. The sources were not able to offer details on how or whether the weapon was being used in combat.

The weapon is designed to shoot an invisible beam of energy at people, creating an intense burning sensation that forces them to flee. The Air Force has called it the “goodbye effect.” It has not been used before in military operations.

U.S. Air Force

The Active Denial System, a nonlethal weapon being considered for use in Afghanistan, shoots at its target energy that causes a burning sensation on the skin. The heat quickly becomes intolerable and forces the target to move.

Defense Department representatives confirmed the weapon was being considered for use and did not deny it was in Afghanistan, but indicated it had not yet been used operationally.

“Consideration is under way for the appropriate employment of an Active Denial System,” Kelley Hughes, a representative for the Joint Nonlethal Weapons Directorate, wrote in an e-mail to AOL News.

In 2008, the Pentagon considered deploying the Active Denial System in Iraq, but the effort was stymied over policy concerns. Whether it will become part of the U.S. arsenal is Afghanistan remains unclear.

“It is my understanding that there are discussions under way about deploying an ADS but no decision/approval yet,” Marine Corps Col. Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, wrote in an e-mail to AOL News when asked whether the Pentagon’s civilian leadership had approved the weapon’s use in Afghanistan.

Lapan was unable to respond by deadline to requests for further clarification.

The technology used in the Active Denial System, which was developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory at Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., has been adapted to several different configurations. Lab officials told AOL News that the weapon sent to Afghanistan is a Block 2, a more advanced version that is mounted on a military vehicle. The lab is also looking at a mounting it on an aircraft.

Michael Kleiman, a spokesman for the Air Force Research Laboratory, declined comment and referred calls to the Joint Nonlethal Weapons Directorate. The directorate’s Hughes did not respond to additional e-mails or calls seeking confirmation of whether ADS is in Afghanistan.

An automated reply to an e-mail sent to Col. Tracy J. Tafolla, head of the Joint Nonlethal Weapons Directorate, indicated he was out of the office until June 28.

The military’s history of disclosing details about the controversial weapon has been mixed. After years of secret work, the Pentagon disclosed the weapon’s existence in 2001, shortly before a news article was about to be published describing the device.

Though the Air Force says years of testing have proved its safety, in 2007 an airman acting as a test subject was severely burned. The Air Force later that year released a heavily redacted report describing the accident, which required the airman to be airlifted to a burn center. A copy of the full report later provided to Wired.com revealed that the lack of proper operator training and missing safety equipment contributed to the accident.

The Air Force has since said the technical problems were related to the earlier Block 1 system, and the training problems have been resolved.

In a phone interview, John Alexander, former head of the nonlethal weapons program at Los Alamos National Laboratory, told AOL News that he was not aware of the weapon’s deployment, but that he thought it would be useful in Afghanistan for point defense, such as protecting a base. The barriers to deploying the weapon have been policy concerns, not technical problems, said Alexander, who has been a longtime supporter of the Active Denial System.

“Mostly the issues are the concern about publicity,” he said.

Two Muslim women have claimed they were refused a bus ride because one had her face covered by a veil.

The students, both 22 and from Slough, Berkshire, boarded a Metroline bus from Russell Square to Paddington, London.

But they said when they presented their tickets on Tuesday, the driver told them they were a “threat” to passengers and ordered them off the bus.

The firm has started an “urgent” investigation. The Muslim Council of Britain said it was “deeply concerned”.

The pair, who have made a formal complaint to the bus company, have asked the BBC not to reveal their full names.

Yasmin was wearing a hijab and Atoofa was dressed in a niqab – which covers the face.

Yasmin said at first she boarded the bus by mistake when it was not in service to ask where it was going, but was told by the driver to get off.

“About 10 minutes later… the passengers started getting on. When I went forward to show my ticket he said, ‘Get off the bus’. I presumed he was still angry because I got on the bus before.

“He said, ‘I am not going to take you on the bus because you two are a threat.’

“I realised it wasn’t due to me getting on the bus, this may be a racist attack.”

She asked for his contact details but when he refused she began to film him and he covered his face.

“I said, ‘It’s OK for you to cover your face on my recording but it’s not OK for my friend to cover her face out of choice?’

“There was no point arguing with him, we got off the bus and by then my anger turned into emotion.”