Insurgents blamed for most civilian deaths

KABUL, Afghanistan, March 10 (UPI) -- Officials with Afghan and U.S.-led NATO forces blame insurgents for nearly 9 in 10 civilian deaths in the war during the last two years.

Also, military officials said Afghan and NATO forces killed eight insurgents, and were detaining several others.

An air weapons team in the southwestern Afghan Helmand province town of Sangin killed five insurgents after spotting the men with a bomb detonator and an automatic machine gun mounted on their truck, NATO's International Security Assistance Force reported.

Troops also killed two insurgents linked to a senior Taliban Sunni Islamist weapons smuggler during a shootout in the eastern Zabul province's Shamulzayi district, the military force said. Troops opened fire on the insurgents after one brandished a weapon and the other "appeared to attempt to detonate a suicide vest," it said.

Troops killed another armed insurgent and detained several others, including a Taliban leader responsible for distributing materials used for building car bombs, in the southern Kandahar province's Kandahar city, as well as detaining suspected insurgents in eastern Afghanistan's Khost and Logan provinces, the military said.

The report came the same day the security assistance force reported insurgents, largely through bombs and executions, caused 88 percent of Afghanistan's 2,537 civilian deaths and 5,594 civilian injuries during the past two years.

Twelve percent of the deaths and injuries were the fault of U.S. and coalition forces, the military told Science magazine.

The figures for two years are about half those in a U.N. estimate for 2010 alone.

The world body and the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission said Wednesday 2,777 civilians were killed in 2010, with 75 percent of the casualties due to attacks by the Taliban and other insurgents rather than coalition forces.