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UN: Number of Afghan civilians killed, injured rises 31%

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KABUL, Afghanistan -- The pace of Afghan civilian deaths accelerated sharply in the first half of this year, increasing by 31 percent, with women and children bearing the brunt of spiraling violence, the United Nations said Tuesday.

However, the Western military and its Afghan allies were responsible for a significantly smaller proportion of the deaths than previously, with insurgents blamed for roughly three-quarters of the fatalities, the U.N. mission in Afghanistan said.

Most of the civilian casualties -- nearly 1,300 dead and almost 2,000 injured -- were caused by improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, which are also the principal killer of NATO troops. Insurgents are not only building more bombs, but more powerful ones, the U.N. report said.

The jump in insurgent-caused casualties -- up more than 50 percent from the same period a year ago -- may have prompted the Taliban to recently issue a “code of conduct” that discourages the indiscriminate killing of civilians.

The code, though, also specifically instructs the movement’s fighters to target Afghans who work with the government or with Western forces. Such assassinations have doubled so far this year.

The Taliban movement is locked in something of a public-relations war with NATO, which in recent weeks has been issuing near-daily accounts of civilian deaths at insurgents’ hands.

On the one hand, the Taliban routinely claims responsibility for atrocities such as the killing of a Christian charity’s 10-member medical team last week, but the insurgents also sometimes contest accounts of cruel punishments meted out to civilians for alleged offenses under Islamic law.

The U.N. mission’s director of human rights, Georgette Gagnon, called on all parties to do more to safeguard the lives of noncombatants.

“The devastating human impact of these events underscores that … measures to protect Afghan civilians effectively and minimize the impact of the conflict on basic human rights are more urgent than ever,” she said.

The greatest numbers of deadly attacks took place in the south -- the traditional Taliban heartland -- where deaths increased by 43 percent, the U.N. said.

Laura.King@latimes.com

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