The Taliban insurgent group is responsibility for nearly 90 percent of all civilian casualties in Afghanistan, the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement on Saturday after the release of an annual UN report that revealed higher civilian casualties in 2013.
"The report once again highlights that in 2013, insurgents caused the overwhelming majority of civilian casualties," the ISAF said in a statement. "The Taliban are responsible for nearly 90 percent of all civilian casualties, according to ISAF statistics. Their indiscriminate use of improvised explosive devices and attacks on coalition and Afghan National Security Forces from civilian homes and compounds are a grave violation of international law."
"The Taliban continue to attack mosques and healthcare facilities, they target schools by burning them down, placing IEDs near them, and occupying them for insurgent activities," it said.
The Afghan Ministry of Interior (MoI) on Sunday criticized the killing of civilians by Taliban insurgents.
According to the statement release by MoI, targeting of civilian women and children was a program of the Taliban that had remained unchanged despite international and national condemnation.
Targeting civilians is contradictory to Islamic law and cannot be justified, the statement added.
ISAF also vowed to work closely with their Afghan counterparts and take all actions necessary to reduce the civilian casualties.
The UN report released on Saturday said that civilian casualties in Afghanistan had increased 14% in 2013 compared to a year before. The report documents 2,959 civilian's deaths and 5,656 injuries during 2013, attributing about third of them to the insurgents.
Since 2009, the armed conflict in Afghanistan has claimed the lives of 14,064 Afghan civilians. "UNAMA attributed 74 percent of civilian deaths and injuries to anti-government elements, 11 percent to pro-government Forces (eight percent to Afghan national security forces and three percent to international forces) and ten percent to ground engagements between anti-government elements and pro-government forces," the report said.
The remaining five percent of civilian casualties were unattributed, resulting mainly from explosive remnants of war, the report said.
The UN Secretary-General's Special Representative for Afghanistan, Ján Kubiš has said that the "armed conflict has imposed a brutal cost on Afghan civilians in 2013."