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Over 1,000 civilians killed in Afghan fighting last year: NATO
Brussels (AFP) Jan 28, 2009 NATO-led forces accidently killed nearly 100 civilians during fighting with insurgents in Afghanistan last year, while the Taliban and other groups were responsible for almost 1,000 such deaths, the Alliance said Wednesday. The number of civilian fatalities caused by ISAF (NATO-led International Security Assistance Force) was 97 for 2008, while militant groups, including the Taliban first and foremost, were responsible for 987 such deaths, said Alliance spokesman James Appathurai. "I want to put into context the fact that the Taliban and other groups like them caused over 80 percent of the civilian casualties in Afghanistan and they do it in an indiscriminate way," he stressed. "So I would hope there would be a proportionate focus on what the Taliban and other groups are doing, even as we make every effort to diminish the civilian casualties unintentionally caused by us." Afghan President Hamid Karzai "quite rightly continues to draw attention to what we do with regard to civilian casualties and we are working very hard to improve it," said Appathurai. In particular he pointed out that last month NATO issued "tactical directives" laying out its guidelines on how NATO forces should operate. The spokesman at NATO's Brussels headquarters was unable to provide comparative figures for previous years, saying that there had previously been no reliable system of collating them. "We put in a new tracking system last year. Before that we weren't frankly confident in or ability to judge it accurately. "You have to understand this is a country where there are no birth certificates, there are no death certificates, people are buried very quickly and this is often in remote areas." There are nearly 70,000 foreign troops under NATO and US command in Afghanistan fighting a Taliban insurgency alongside Afghan forces. The Taliban were removed from government in late 2001 in a US-led invasion and are waging an insurgency that has picked up pace in the past three years. Share This Article With Planet Earth
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