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Civilian Casualties Reach Highest Level in Afghan War, U.N. Says

July was the deadliest month for noncombatants in Afghanistan since the organization began tracking such figures a decade ago.

A funeral in Kabul, Afghanistan, for victims of a suicide bombing at a wedding hall in August.Credit...Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times

KABUL, Afghanistan — Civilian casualties caused by the long and intensifying conflict in Afghanistan reached a record number in the third quarter of 2019, the United Nations said on Thursday as it reiterated a call for an urgent cease-fire.

In its quarterly report documenting the harm to civilians by all sides of the conflict, the United Nations’ mission in Afghanistan said civilian deaths and injuries had increased by 42 percent in the third quarter of this year compared with the same period last year, with 1,174 civilians killed and 3,139 wounded. In July alone, 425 Afghan civilians were killed and 1,164 wounded, making it the deadliest month since the mission started tracking civilian harm in 2009.

“The harm caused to civilians by the fighting in Afghanistan signals the importance of peace talks leading to a cease-fire and a permanent political settlement to the conflict; there is no other way forward,” said Tadamichi Yamamoto, the head of the United Nations mission in Afghanistan. “Civilian casualties are totally unacceptable, especially in the context of the widespread recognition that there can be no military solution to the conflict in Afghanistan.”

The uptick in civilian deaths correlates with the increased number of Afghan and American military operations that followed the collapse of the peace negotiations and the Taliban’s subsequent all-out war on the Afghan presidential elections last month.

“We have been hitting our Enemy harder than at any time in the last ten years!” President Trump said on Twitter last month.

While the United Nations had pointed blame at Afghan and coalition forces for causing a large share of the casualties earlier in the year, the organization said the increase in the third quarter was mainly because of large-scale attacks, including suicide bombings, by the Taliban and the Islamic State affiliate in the country.

Even while talks with the Taliban continued late in the summer in an effort to find a settlement to the long war, both sides were hitting each other hard to gain leverage at the negotiating table. The Taliban continued carrying out suicide bombings, assaulting districts and besieging to cities. Afghan commandos, supported by American air power, retaliated with frequent airstrikes and special operations raids, some of them blamed for causing civilian casualties.

Some of the deadliest militant attacks resulting in mass civilian casualties included a suicide bombing in a wedding hall claimed by the Islamic State, which killed as many as 80 people, and a truck bombing outside a hospital in Zabul Province that killed at least 20. The Taliban also claimed responsibility for an explosion outside a campaign rally for President Ashraf Ghani that resulted in the deaths of at least 25 civilians.

The deadliest attack blamed on Afghan and coalition forces is the reported death of up to 40 civilians in an operation in Helmand Province last month that Afghan and American forces said had resulted in the killing of one of the most high-profile Qaeda leaders in years. Also last month, locals in the Khogyani district of the eastern province of Nangarhar said about 30 civilians harvesting pine nuts were killed by an airstrike.

The Taliban’s offensives come in waves that can last up to three weeks, Afghan security officials say. In response, Afghan forces tend to concentrate their firepower during that wave to stop the insurgents’ advance and make it harder for them to regroup and retaliate.

United States Air Force documents show that in September alone, American aircraft dropped 948 munitions, the most in any month in the last five years. So far this year, the number of missiles and bombs dropped by American forces in Afghanistan is set to meet or possibly outpace the 7,362 munitions launched in 2018. The most ordnance dropped before 2018, according to Air Force data compiled since 2006, was in 2011 at the height of American military presence in the country, with 5,411 munitions.

And while there are roughly 14,000 American troops on the ground, along with several thousand from NATO countries, assessing civilian casualties from offensive operations is usually done by overheard surveillance aircraft such as drones. But experts warn that the grainy footage — often the equivalent of looking at the ground through a soda straw — usually presents only a limited picture of what happens after an airstrike. The United States military has repeatedly criticized the United Nations’ methodology on counting civilian casualties.

One of the most recent operations in which civilians were hurt came last week, when eight people were killed and eight others wounded in an airstrike in the northern province of Badakshan, according to Naji Nazari, a member of the provincial council there.

Among the dead were four children and two women, he said. It is unclear if the airstrike was carried out by American or Afghan forces. The fledgling Afghan Air Force has a small fleet of single-engine propeller planes, supplied and equipped by the United States, that are capable of dropping guided and unguided bombs.

Najim Rahim and Fahim Abed contributed reporting.

Mujib Mashal is The New York Times correspondent for South Asia. Born in Kabul, he wrote for magazines such as The Atlantic, Harper’s, Time and others before joining The Times. More about Mujib Mashal

Thomas Gibbons-Neff is a correspondent in the Kabul bureau and a former Marine infantryman. More about Thomas Gibbons-Neff

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: Civilian Casualties Reach Highest Level in Afghan War, U.N. Says. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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