Associated Press Writer
KABUL -- Taliban suicide bombings and other attacks caused Afghan civilian deaths to soar last year to the highest annual level of the war, a U.N. report found Wednesday, while deaths attributed to allied troops dropped nearly 30 percent. Many Afghans now blame the violence on the Taliban rather than foreign forces.
A decline in NATO killings of civilians has become a key U.S. goal for winning over the Afghan people. Public outrage over rising death tolls prompted the top commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal last year to tighten the rules on the use of airstrikes and other weaponry if civilians are at risk.
The United Nations said 2,412 civilians were killed in 2009 -- a 14 percent increase over the 2,118 who died in 2008. Nearly 70 percent of civilian deaths last year, or 1,630, were caused by the insurgents, the report found.
NATO and allied Afghan forces were responsible for 25 percent of the deaths, or 596, the U.N. said, down from 39 percent, or 828, in 2008.
The remainder could not be attributed to either side: civilians caught in the crossfire or killed by unexploded ordnance, according to the report.
More than half the civilian deaths were a result of suicide attacks and other bombings as well as assassinations and executions -- despite an order last year by Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar to avoid endangering noncombatants.
The U.N. said Taliban attacks were mainly aimed at government or international forces but civilians can stumble into ambushes or be too close to a suicide bombing.
Afghans seen as supporting the government or the international community also were increasingly targeted.
A survey commissioned by ABC News, the BBC and ARD German TV found that 42 percent of 1,534 Afghan respondents now blame the violence on the Taliban, up from 27 percent a year ago, while 17 percent blame the U.S., NATO or the Afghan security force, down from 36 percent.
The poll, conducted last month, has an error margin of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
A NATO spokesman, Col. Wayne Shanks, credited the military's new restraint for the decline in the number of deaths blamed on pro-government forces.
"We have tried to refocus our efforts in order to protect the civilian population, the Afghan people, because we need their support in order to break the back of the insurgency," he said.
Nevertheless, NATO airstrikes still killed 359 civilians in 2009 -- 60 percent of the deaths attributed to pro-government forces and 15 percent of civilian deaths overall, according to the report.
On the Net:
http://unama.unmissions.org/Default.aspx?tabid=1741 ctl=Details mid=1882 ItemID=7260
