Battles between the Taliban and government forces were responsible for the most Afghan civilian casualties last year, the war’s deadliest year, surpassing roadside bombs as the leading killer for the first time, the UN said yesterday.
A total of 3,699 Afghan civilians were killed and 6,849 wounded in the war last year, as fighting intensified in tandem with the sharp drawdown of US and allied foreign troops who formally ended their combat role in December after 13 years.
The 22 percent rise in civilian deaths and injuries — the highest total since the UN began keeping records in 2009 — came despite US generals’ assessment that the newly trained Afghan army and police are winning the war.
Assassinations by the Taliban and their allies made up 11 percent of the overall toll, and insurgent suicide attacks accounted for 15 percent. Explosives left on battlefields caused 4 percent of casualties and the rest were classified as “other.”
“Mortars, IEDs [improvised explosive devices], gunfire and other explosives destroyed human life, stole limbs and ruined lives at unprecedented levels,” UN special representative in Afghanistan Nicholas Haysom said.
“Rising civilian deaths and injuries in 2014 attests to a failure to fulfil commitments to protect Afghan civilians from harm,” Haysom said.
“Parties to the conflict should understand the impact of their actions and take responsibility for them, uphold the values they claim to defend, and make protecting civilians their first priority,” he said.
Ground battles killed 1,092 civilians and accounted for 34 percent of civilian deaths and injuries, compared with 28 percent caused by IEDs.
The UN recorded 511 civilian deaths in December alone as the Taliban, who were ousted from power by a US-led coalition in 2001, launched waves of attacks to coincide with the official end of the NATO-led combat mission.
The report attributed 72 percent of all civilian deaths and injuries last year to the Taliban and their allies, who seek to re-establish radical Muslim rule.
Government forces were responsible for 14 percent of casualties, international forces’ air strikes accounted for 2 percent and the fault could not be determined in 10 percent of cases.
The Taliban have in the past strenuously denied being responsible for the vast majority of civilian deaths, calling the UN biased.
Afghanistan’s national army and police have also suffered record losses last year, with nearly 5,000 killed.
The report by the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) also underlined the dire social and economic consequences of civilian losses on Afghan society, with the deaths or injuries of men often leaving their wives as the sole breadwinners of their households, forcing them to marry off their daughters or take children out of school to work.
“For Afghan women and children, the anguish of losing a husband and father in the conflict is often only the beginning of their suffering and hardship,” UNAMA director of human rights Georgette Gagnon said.
In its recommendations, UNAMA urged the Taliban to cease its use of IEDs, while asking government forces to stop using mortars and rockets in densely populated areas.
It also demanded Kabul disband government militias and hold accountable those members of armed groups who carry out rights abuses.
Since the UN began tracking civilian casualties in 2009, 17,774 civilian deaths and 29,971 injuries have been recorded.
Additional reporting by AFP
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of