At least 1,060 Afghan civilians have been killed in fighting between Taliban insurgents and Afghan security forces backed by international troops since April, the UN's Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) news service reports. "Civilian deaths in military operations conducted by international forces - particularly US troops operating outside NATO writ - and their Afghan allies have roughly balanced that of the Taliban," the article states. The death toll comes from a confidential report prepared by Afghanistan's Ministry of Interior. According to UN sources, the number of people dying in conflict-related violence has doubled in the last two years.
In May, IRIN reported that the UN would set up a database to track civilian casualties. Access to the database has not been made public. In the same article, IRIN reported that in the first four months of 2007 up to 380 civilians had been killed in military operations by both sides. If the figures quoted in the two articles are accurate and discrete, total civilian casualties for 2007 to date would total more than 1,400.
In a July 2 press conference, a spokesperson for the Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General and UN agencies in Afghanistan provided more detail on the database:
"It's correct that UNAMA [United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan] has established a database and we are in the process of developing it. Our database is made up of information that we ourselves have verified in some instances, and in other instances where we haven't been able to gain access to some areas it is based on secondary information. I want to emphasize that our database is not an absolute measure of civilian casualties. It is an indicator of trends. In terms of what the data says so far, it shows changes on a month-by-month basis. We use a range of criteria which includes civilian casualties caused by pro-government forces, civilian casualties from anti-government forces, and casualties from other causes, for example, mines and unexploded ordinance."
