My Take | Victims of war must be humanised, too

As a parent, my heart goes out to the mother and father of Martin Richard, the eight-year-old boy who was killed in the Boston Marathon bombing. A family photo of the vibrant, smiling young boy was prominently featured in major US newspapers and some foreign publications as well.

As a journalist, I understand the need to humanise a tragedy, so the victims do not become just another set of statistics.

But I question why the US media rarely publish photos of children killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thousands of children have been killed or maimed by US-led forces. Effectively, they became mere statistics in the US "war on terror".

Just last week, a Nato air strike killed 10 Afghan civilians and four insurgents. These included five boys and four women who had the misfortune of living next to a house where insurgents were holed up.

Wouldn't it be more fair-minded if the American news media made more effort to humanise the innocents killed as collateral damage by US-led forces in a war that their government has been waging for more than a decade?

Were those Afghan boys worth less as human beings than Richard? Do their parents and relatives, assuming they survived the air strike, not grieve as much as Richard's parents?