The Office of the National Security Council (NSC) said the Taliban killed at least 23 civilians and wounded 45 more in their attacks last week.
“Taliban continue to take the lives of civilians in Afghanistan,” said NSC spokesperson Javid Faisal talking about the killings of children and women.
Faisal said, “This violent phase of attacks on civilian can only deteriorate the already shaken trust on the will of the Taliban.”
Their figures show that 16 provinces of the country witnessed 284 attack in the last seven days. The Taliban has not yet commented on the statistics.
On Friday, Abdullah Abdullah, chairman of the High Council for National Reconciliation also criticized the Taliban for not showing their commitment to the reduction in violence condition which was part of the Doha agreement.
Referring to the prisoner release, Abdullah said, “I had discussions with President Ghani in that regard and spoke about it earlier in detail… and we need to move from this phase to the next, which is the phase of engagement but in between also the level of violence which is unacceptable is mainly caused by the Taliban,” Abdullah said.
Abdullah mentioned that the Taliban need to secure a commitment on the “reduction in violence, comprehensive ceasefire and continued engagement.”
Figures by the Afghanistan Independent human rights commission (AIHRC) also show civilians are the main casualties in the ongoing violence.
AIHRC said 86,823 civilians were killed and wounded in 2019 in Afghanistan.
People’s Peace Movement across the country are also marching and asking “why this war?”
and urging the Taliban to reduce their violence so that the intra-Afghan peace talks can start.
During the international peace meetings over the past week, President Ashraf Ghani also mentioned that the escalation of Taliban violence is a major challenge for the peace process and the Afghan government will only agree to the talks if the Reduction in Violence (RiV) conditions are met.
