The number of civilians killed in the Afghan war during the first six months of 2011 rose 15 percent on a year earlier, the UN mission in the country announced Thursday.
The United States last year surged thousands of extra troops into Afghanistan and commanders had said that levels of violence in the 2011 fighting season would be an indication of the extent to which it had worked.
The annual mid-year report said insurgents accounted for 80 percent of all deaths and that NATO troops were responsible for 14 percent of killings, with half of all casualties caused by bomb attacks.
“As the conflict intensified in the traditional fighting areas of the south and southeast and moved to districts in the west and north, civilians experienced a downward spiral in protection,” the UN mission said
The United Nations “documented 1,462 civilian deaths in the first six months of 2011, an increase of 15 percent over the same period in 2010.”
It attributed the rise to a wide range of increased violence, including a greater use of improvised bombs, suicide attacks and targeted killings, as well as more ground fighting and a rise in casualties from NATO air strikes.
