1800-1859 | Battlefield butchery | Civilians slaughtered | India | Looting and plunder | Massacres | Prisoners murdered

8,000 killed and hundreds burned alive as Redcoats sack the Indian city of Jhansi

ByAlisdare Hickson

3 April 1858 On 3 April 1858, redcoats, under the command of General Sir Hugh Rose, stormed the Indian city of Jhansi, where the 22 year old Rani Lakshmibai, the legendary warrior-queen, was leading a rebellion against British rule.  Rose later proudly acknowledged that he had avenged an earlier massacre of British officers and their families…

1940-1949 | Civilians slaughtered | Egypt

British troops in Cairo shoot dead twenty demonstrators with machine guns.

ByAlisdare Hickson

21 February 1946 On Thursday 21 February 1946, British troops opened fire, with machine guns, on protesters in Midan Ismailiya (now better known as Tahrir Square) in central Cairo, killing twenty and injuring about 300.1  According to a report in the Scotsman the following day: ‘The Square outside the Kasr El Nil Barracks was a smoke-filled battleground…

1920-1939 | Civilians slaughtered | Massacres | Pakistan | Uncategorized

Machine guns turned on unarmed Peshawar crowd killing up to 400

ByAlisdare Hickson

[ 23 April 1930 ] On 23 April 1930, British and Gurkha troops opened fire on an unarmed crowd in Peshawar killing at least 20, according to the official estimate, and as many as 400, according to Indian sources.1 A large crowd had gathered at the Qissa Khwani Bazaar to protest the arrest that morning of…

1900-1919 | China | Civilians slaughtered | Looting and plunder | Massacres

British and allied troops sack Tientsin slaughtering civilians

ByAlisdare Hickson

[ 14 July 1900 ] British and Allied troops sent to crush an alliance of Boxer rebels and Chinese imperial forces, seized the northern port city of Tientsin (Tianjin) in the early hours of 14 July 1900. The Dundee Courier noted that ‘after the city was entered, there was at first indiscriminate slaughter, and it is alleged…

Blair's crimes | Civilians slaughtered | Iraq

Britain and the US invade Iraq, leading to 650,000 deaths by 2006

ByAlisdare Hickson

[ 20 March 2003 ] On 20 March 2003, Britain joined the United States in an illegal military assault on Iraq in order to enforce regime change and eliminate the country’s alleged ‘weapons of mass destruction,’ even though London was aware that there was no credible evidence for their existence.  As the chief UN weapons…

1860-1899 | Civilians slaughtered | Egypt | Massacres

British fleet bombards Alexandria, killing hundreds

ByAlisdare Hickson

[ 11 July 1882 ] On 11 July 1882,  shortly after sunrise, a British fleet of fourteen warships began a deafening bombardment of Alexandria’s coastal defences and harbour area. It followed Egypt’s refusal to accept Britain’s supposed right to oversee and manage the country’s budget, which included huge payments in interest to the Suez Canal…

1800-1859 | Afghanistan | Burning towns and cities | Civilians slaughtered | Demolishing urban areas | Looting and plunder | Massacres | Punitive operations

Kabul sacked in an orgy of fire, looting and ‘wholesale butchery’

ByAlisdare Hickson

[ 10 October 1842 ] On 10 October 1842, British troops used explosives and fire to destroy much of the Afghan capital of Kabul, including the Great Bazar and an adjacent mosque. They also burned down an unknown number of domestic dwellings, slaughtering their owners. Only two neighbourhoods, deemed ‘friendly’, were left untouched and the…

2000-2009 | Afghanistan | Civilians slaughtered

EIGHT AFGHAN CIVILIANS KILLED BY UK AIR STRIKE – REPORT KEPT SECRET

ByAlisdare Hickson

19 May 2009 On the morning of 19 May, a patrol of local police and Royal Gurkha Rifles in the southern Afghan province of Helmand came under small arms fire from insurgents. The ambush occurred not in remote mountain or desert terrain, but on densely populated rich agricultural land, distinguished by its many villages, farms,…

1500-1799 | Civilians slaughtered | United States

Redcoats shoot dead five Bostonians who had been hurling snowballs

ByAlisdare Hickson

5 March 1770 The anniversary is commemorated every year with an annual reenactment in Boston, Massachusetts, but is virtually forgotten in Britain. During the early evening of Monday 5 March 1770, several Redcoats had been seen ‘parading the streets (of the colonial port) with their drawn cutlasses and bayonets, abusing and wounding numbers of the…

2010-2019 | Afghanistan | Assassinations | Civilians slaughtered

Three Afghan boys shot in the head by an SAS soldier

ByAlisdare Hickson

18 October 2012 During the autumn of 2012, the SAS conducted numerous armed raids against suspect Taliban members’ homes across the Afghan province of Helmand. Seven years later, the Sunday Times, reporting the suspected cover-up of a man and three boys who had been shot dead in their home, noted that individuals were often targeted ‘as a…