Insurgent attacks in Afghanistan jumped by 50 percent in the first half of the year as militants crept closer to the capital and increasingly turned their guns on aid workers, a new security report said.
The data from the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office (ANSO), a Kabul-based group funded by Western donors that advises relief groups on security, could fuel concern that the effort to stabilize Afghanistan is failing.
In a quarterly report released late on Sunday, ANSO said it logged 2,056 insurgent attacks in the six months through last month, a 52 percent increase from 1,362 incidents in the same period of last year.
The report, which included figures from the first few weeks of this month, said that 19 aid workers have been killed this year, compared to 15 in all of last year.
The figures “clearly demonstrate that the conflict is escalating more rapidly in 2008 than in previous years” and reflect the growing strength and improved logistics of the militants, ANSO said.
The increase in attacks on aid groups is ominous for a country that depends heavily on foreign aid. Many impoverished rural communities depend on food handouts delivered by agencies, including the UN, during periodic droughts.
Much of the south and east have been virtual no-go zones for relief workers for years, hampering efforts to persuade Afghans to oppose resurgent Taliban militants and support the Western-backed government.
ANSO also said violence was up sharply in relatively peaceful northern and western Afghanistan as well as the region surrounding Kabul — areas where international relief groups still operate with relative freedom.
While criminals were the main danger to aid workers last year, the data for this year shows that 55 percent of the 78 attacks so far are linked to insurgents, ANSO said.
Meanwhile, up to 70 insurgents were killed in Afghanistan early on Sunday when helicopter gunships and ground fighting repulsed an attack by about 100 rebels near the Pakistan border, officials said.
About 100 insurgents had tried to capture the Spera district center, 15km from the border with Pakistan, opening fire on police at about 2am with guns and rocket-propelled grenades, the NATO force said.
Police and soldiers from NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) surrounded the attackers and called air strikes consisting of heavy machinegun fire from helicopters, an ISAF statement said.
In other developments, NATO said yesterday that its troops had killed two children in southern Afghanistan by opening fire on a car that they feared was about to attack their convoy.
The alliance said in a statement that the troops opened fire on the car in Kandahar Province after its driver ignored repeated signals to keep its distance.
Militants regularly use civilian cars loaded with explosives in suicide missions against Afghan and foreign troops.
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