Report: Insurgents Killed 669 Afghans

An Afghan man walks among vehicles which were damaged by a remote-controlled bomb that was placed on a bicycle in Herat province, southwest of Kabul, Afghanistan on in this Saturday, March 3, 2007, file photo. The March 3 bomb blast in western Afghanistan killed two Afghan civilians and wounded 17 others, officials said. According to a report released on Monday April 16, 2007, insurgents have committed war crimes by attacking ordinary Afghans and killed 669 civilians in 2006, the heaviest toll since the Taliban's ouster in 2001. (AP Photo/Fraidoon Pooyaa, FILE) (Fraidoon Pooyaa - AP)

Militants have increasingly targeted aid workers, journalists and government employees, condemning them as spies or collaborators. In 2006, the report stated, at least 177 civilians were assassinated.

The recent killing of an Afghan journalist who was captured along with an Italian journalist for whom he was working as a translator and their driver, underscored the situation.

"The Taliban's murders of Afghan journalist Ajmal Naqshbandi and driver Sayed Agha were war crimes," Mariner said.

The Italian journalist, Daniele Mastrogiacomo of the daily La Repubblica, was freed after a heavily criticized deal in which the Afghan government released five Taliban insurgents in exchange for him.

The report included comments from witnesses, victims and relatives and said anger over the civilian deaths was focused on the militants.

"I lost my son, brother and nephew because of the Taliban. They say that they are fighting for God and Islam, but they are not; they are killing good and innocent Muslims and Afghans who have done nothing wrong," said a man identified in the report by the pseudonym Abdullah whose shop was destroyed by a suicide car bomb last August in the south.

Human Rights Watch said it hoped its report could shame the increasingly radical Taliban into altering its tactics.

"We don't think that change is easy, but they're not entirely impervious to pressure," Mariner said.