Very deadly year in Afghanistan

KABUL, Afghanistan - The number of civilians killed in fighting between insurgents and security forces in Afghanistan has soared by two-thirds in the first half of this year, to almost 700 people, a senior U.N. official said yesterday.

Also yesterday, NATO said an explosion in southern Afghanistan has killed one of its soldiers.

The alliance says the soldier died during a security patrol in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province. Most troops in Helmand are British, but NATO did not reveal the soldier's nationality.

June has been the deadliest month for international troops in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. An Associated Press count of soldier deaths shows 42 have died this month, surpassing the 33 killed in September 2006.

The figures are a grim reminder of how the nearly seven-year war has failed to stabilize the country, and suggest that ordinary civilians are bearing a heavy toll, particularly from stepped-up militant attacks.

John Holmes, the world body's humanitarian affairs chief, said the insecurity was making it increasingly difficult to deliver emergency aid to Afghans hit by the global food crisis.

"Most of those casualties are caused by the insurgents, who seem to have no regard for civilian life, but there are also still significant numbers caused by the international military forces," Holmes said in Kabul.

Holmes said U.N. figures show that 698 civilians have died as a result of the fighting in the first half of this year. That compares to 430 in the first six months of 2007, a rise of 62 percent.

Militants caused 422 of the recorded civilian casualties, while government or foreign troops killed 255 people, according to the U.N. numbers. The cause of 21 other deaths was unclear.

NATO's reaction to the U.N. figures was cool.

"The U.N. Human Rights rapporteur [investigator] made an accusation [in May] that we had killed 200, and I said then that those numbers were far, far higher than we would recognize, and that is still the case," said Mark Laity, a spokesman for the alliance in Kabul.

Laity provided no alternative figures.

Afghan leaders, including President Hamid Karzai, have accused NATO and the U.S.-led coalition of recklessly endangering civilians by using excessive force, including airstrikes, in residential areas.

Foreign commanders insist they take all reasonable precautions to avoid killing innocents and say militants routinely fire on them from houses and flee into villages. *