United Nations assistance mission in Afghanistan (Unama) has urged the Taliban leadership to implement its ban on anti-personnel landmines as it applies to the improvised explosive devices being used in Afghanistan.
“Although the Taliban through its leader Mullah Omar banned the use of anti-personnel landmines in 1998 denouncing such weapons as “un-Islamic” and “anti-human”, anti-Government elements continue to use these landmine-like IEDs with devastating harm to civilians,” Unama said Saturday in a statement.
Unama renewed its call for civilian lives to be protected and for the Taliban to cease using the indiscriminate bomb method after 19 civilians were killed and 16 others were injured on Friday. The large group was on their way to a wedding in the Dawlat Abad district of northern Balkh province when their vehicle hit a suspected pressure-plated IED in the road.
The Ministry of Interior spokesman Sediq Sediqqi said that most of the victims were children and women.
Unama said IEDs are by far the biggest killer of civilians in Afghanistan’s armed conflict.
“Unama’s tracking of civilian casualties reveals that IEDs killed 340 civilians and injured a further 599 over the past nine months (1 January to 30 September 2012), an increase of almost 30 per cent compared to the same period last year. The majority of IEDs used in Afghanistan are victim-activated pressure plate IEDs and cause the most civilian deaths and injuries,” it said.
According to an earlier UN report, 1,145 civilians have been killed in the war in the first six months of this year, with 80 per cent of the deaths blamed on insurgents. More than half were caused by roadside bombs.
In 2011, a record 3,021 civilians died in the war, the UN has said.
Insurgents use IEDs to target Afghan and Nato troops, but because they detonate indiscriminately by whoever triggers the pressure-plate, most of the victims are civilian.
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Tags: Ban, bombs, Implement, on 'Landmine-Like, Taliban, to, UN, urges
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