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Over 11,000 civilian casualties in Afghanistan in 2015, says UN

Kabul - Women and children again bearing the brunt of the violence.

The number of civilians killed or wounded in Afghanistan last year was the highest recorded since 2009, the UN said on Sunday, with children paying a particularly heavy price.
There were 11,002 civilian casualties in 2015 including 3,545 deaths, the UN said in its annual report on Afghan civilians in armed conflict, a four percent rise over the previous high in 2014."The harm done to civilians is totally unacceptable," said Nicholas Haysom, the UN's special representative for Afghanistan.
"We call on those inflicting this pain on the people of Afghanistan to take concrete action to protect civilians and put a stop to the killing and maiming."Fighting and attacks in populated areas and major cities were described as the main causes of civilian deaths in 2015, underscoring a push by Taleban militants into urban centres "with a high likelihood of causing civilian harm", the report stated.The UN began compiling the annual report in 2009.Including Taleban claimed at-tacks, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan assigned responsibility for 62 per cent of total civilian casualties in 2015 to anti-government elements.But the report also noted a 28 per cent year-on-year surge in the number of casualties caused by pro-government forces, including the Afghan army and international troops.Seventeen per cent of all casual-ties in 2015 were caused by such forces, the report said. It was not possible to say which side caused the remaining 21 per cent of casualties.
The report criticised Afghan forces in particular for their reliance on ex-plosives in populated areas.US and other international troops moved from a combat to a training, advisory and assistance role in Afghanistan on January 1, 2015, leaving Afghan forces to take the lead in fighting the resurgent militants as they targeted towns and cities."Why did they fire this rocket? Why was it necessary?" the father of a man killed in shelling by the Afghan army in a village in Wardak province in December was quoted as saying in the report.
Nine people died in that attack, according to the report, highlighting the dangers to civilians during ground engagements."Can you imagine how difficult it is when your son is lying in his own blood and you are crying for him?" the father is quoted as saying.The statistics in the report do not "reflect the real horror", Haysom told a Press conference on Sunday."The real cost... is measured in the maimed bodies of children, the communities who have to live with loss, the grief of colleagues and relatives, the families who make do without a breadwinner, the parents who grieved the lost children, the children who grieved the lost parents," he said.One in every four casualties in 2015 was a child, with the report documenting a 14 per cent in-crease in child casualties over the year.