Alive News

The number of civilians killed in Afghanistan in the first half of this year has increased by 1 percent, compared to the same period last year, according to a report released Sunday by the United Nations.

The U.N. mission in Afghanistan said the number — 1,692 killed in violence — is the highest 6-month death toll since the systematic documentation of civilian casualties started in 2009.

In its report, UNAMA said 3,430 Afghan civilians were wounded in the January-June period. The killed and wounded add up to a total of 5,122 civilian casualties, which is a 3 percent overall decrease from the first six months of 2017.

The U.N. mission renewed its call on parties to the conflict to increase efforts to protect the civilian population and work toward reaching a peaceful settlement.

Sunday’s report and others like it reflect the grim reality of Afghanistan today.

Since the U.S. and NATO forces formally concluded their combat mission at the end of 2014, a resurgent Taliban have stepped up their attacks across the country and an Islamic State affiliate has also emerged to launch horrific high-profile attacks that have claimed the lives of scores of civilians.

The U.N. report also cited a lull in June, when the Taliban accepted a three-day cease-fire over the Eid al-Fitr holiday that caps the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. The insurgents later rejected a subsequent call by President Ashraf Ghani to extend it.

Ghani has repeatedly extended calls to the Taliban for peace talks but they have rejected them outright. Speaking at a press conference Sunday in Kabul, Ghani said the NATO summit last week in Brussels fully backed his government’s efforts and peace initiatives.

“The brief cease-fire demonstrated that the fighting can be stopped and that Afghan civilians no longer need to bear the brunt of the war,” the report quoted Tadamichi Yamamoto, the U.N. Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Afghanistan.

“We urge parties to seize all opportunities to find a peaceful settlement – this is the best way that they can protect all civilians,” added Yamamoto, who is also head of UNAMA.

According to the report, 157 women were among those killed and 387 were wounded in the January-June period, the report said. The mission also recorded a total of 1,355 child casualties, with 363 deaths and 992 children wounded in the first six months of the year.

“UNAMA continued to document the toxic consequences of this conflict, with Afghan boys and girls killed, maimed, sexually assaulted, abused, recruited and used by parties to the conflict,” said Danielle Bell, mission’s human rights chief.

The violence, she added, “continued to erode the rights of children to education, health-care, freedom of movement and other fundamental rights, as well as family life, playing outdoors and simply enjoying a childhood free of the brutal effects of war.”

The use of improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, remained the leading cause of civilian casualties, according to the report. The combined use of suicide and non-suicide bombings caused nearly half of all civilian casualties.

The report attributed just over a half — or 52 percent — of civilian casualties from suicide and complex attacks in the first half of the year to the Islamic State group, mainly in the capital of Kabul and the eastern Nangarhar province, where IS has gained a foothold.

On Thursday, at least 10 civilians were killed in Nangarhar’s Khogyani district after the army launched an operation against insurgents there, said Ajmal Omar, a member of the provincial council. The dead were mostly shopkeepers caught in the cross-fire.

The Taliban were responsible for 40 percent while the remainder were attributed to unidentified anti-government elements, the report said.

Troublesome rain and more volcanic activity are hindering search and rescue efforts around Guatemala’s Volcano of Fire, but when teams have been able to work in the hardest hit areas the death toll has continued to rise.

Efforts were cut short again Wednesday when a downpour forced teams to retreat for fear of mudslides. Boiling water flowing down the volcano’s slopes from dangerously hot volcanic gas and ash also posed a threat. A day earlier, flows of super-heated volcanic material forced crews to pull back.

But between stoppages, search teams working with shovels and heavy equipment found more bodies from Sunday’s big eruption. Remains were loaded into body bags and carried out on stretchers.

Guatemala’s National Institute of Forensic Sciences raised the death toll to 99 late in afternoon, an increase of 24 bodies for the day. Only 28 of the total had been identified. At least 197 people were listed as missing.

“Nobody is going to be able to get them out or say how many are buried here,” Efrain Suarez said, standing amid the smoking holes dotting what used to be the village of San Miguel Los Lotes on the flanks of the mountain.

“The bodies are already charred,” the 59-year-old truck driver said. “And if heavy machinery comes in they will be torn apart.”

Rescuers poked metal rods into the ground, sending clouds of smoke pouring into the air in a sign of the super-hot temperatures still remaining below the surface, which firefighters said reached as high as 750 to 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit (400 to 700 degrees Celsius) in some places.

A day after a new evacuation was ordered due to increasing activity by the volcano, a red alert remained in place for the departments of Escuintla, Sacatepequez and Chimaltenango, and people were advised not to linger near the affected zones.

The country’s seismology and volcanology institute warned of new flows descending through canyons on the volcano’s western slope toward the Pantaleon River, carrying boulders and tree trunks.

At a shelter in the Murray D. Lincoln school in the city of Escuintla, about 10 miles (15 kilometers) from the volcano’s peak, Alfonso Castillo said he and his extended family of 30 had lived on a shared plot in San Miguel Los Lotes where each family had its own home.

The volcano is one of Central America’s most active, and everyone was accustomed to rumbling and spewing smoke, so at first nothing seemed unusual Sunday, the 33-year-old farm worker said. But then a huge cloud of ash came pouring out.

“In a matter of three or four minutes the village disappeared,” Castillo said. It was smothered in what he described as a “sea” of muck that came crashing into homes, inundating people, pets and wildlife.

The family holed up in a house that heated up “like a boiler” inside, he said, then made their way onto the roof and then to the upper story of another, concrete home. After a cellphone call to Castillo’s brother, rescuers arrived and took the family to safety.

But the life they knew was gone.

“Nobody wants to go back there. My children say they would rather be in the streets. … There are many people who are helping us, but we have absolutely nothing. We could not get anything out,” Castillo said. “For us, there is no tomorrow.”

In past disasters in which authorities determined there was no chance of finding survivors and further efforts to recover bodies would be too difficult, areas have been declared burial sites, the final resting place of the victims.

Asked about that possibility, the director of Guatemala’s disaster agency, Sergio Cabanas, said: “Not until the search efforts are over, and it would be left up to the people.”