KABUL (PAN): Taliban on Thursday disputed a new UN report on civilian casualties in Afghanistan that said the civilians killed by militants jumped by 65 percent.

The report published on Tuesday said a total of 2, 118 civilians were killed in armed conflicts in 2008, representing a 40 percent increase and among them 1,160 were killed by Taliban militants in suicide attacks, roadside bombs and other attacks and 828 by international and Afghan troops. 

Rejecting the UN report, Taliban fighters in a statement said that it was a one sided affair.

"Most of the Afghans were killed and wounded and forced to leave their homes by the NATO air and ground offensives during the last year," the statement said.

Taliban urged UNAMA to investigate casualties of local civilians in remote parts of the country.

They said a large number of people had been killed in the NATO and the US-led coalition forces airstrikes they carried out in Shindand district and Nuristan, Nangarhar, Kunar, Helmand, Ghazni, Khost, Kandahar, Kapisa, Laghman and Zabul provinces.

"UNAMA has tried to earn a bad name to the Taliban movement, giving unjust information to the international community," the statement claimed.

Waheed Muzhda, a political analyst also blamed the international forces for giving unfair reports about civilian deaths in Afghanistan.

Muzhda said that there were several such incidents in which civilians were killed and the foreign troops insisted that they killed militants. "Afghan officials have differed on many occasions with foreign troops about civilians deaths," he added.

Nazifullah Salarzai, spokesman for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan UNAMA denied commenting on the statement of the Taliban when this scribe contacted him over telephone on Thursday.

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