Hundreds of people were killed or wounded in violence related to <a href="https://www.wionews.com/south-asia/unidentified-gunmen-kill-prosecutor-in-ghor-province-255800">Afghanistan's recent presidential election</a> season as the Taliban sought to undermine the democratic process, a United Nations agency said Tuesday.

The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported that 85 people were killed and another 373 wounded in election violence during the period from June 8 to September 30.

On polling day alone, 28 civilians were killed and 249 injured. Children accounted for more than one-third of the victims.

Despite the high toll, Afghan security forces said election day was a success because the Taliban failed to pull off any large-scale attacks that stole the headlines.&nbsp;

<a href="https://www.wionews.com/south-asia/policeman-killed-4-others-injured-in-bomb-blast-in-southern-afghanistan-255057">The majority of Taliban attacks</a> involved the use of rockets, grenades and mortars, as well as homemade bombs planted near polling centres, including schools, the report found.

On July 28, the same day as the election campaign started, militants targeted the office of Ghani's running mate Amrullah Saleh in Kabul, killing 21 people and wounding another 50.

"These attacks, along with public statements made by the Taliban, revealed a deliberate campaign intended to undermine the electoral process and deprive Afghan citizens of their right to participate in this important political process, freely and without fear," Tadamichi Yamamoto, the U.N. secretary-general's special representative for Afghanistan, said in a statement.

The casualty figures are actually a substantial improvement in the run-up to parliamentary elections held a year ago, when UNAMA tallied 226 deaths and 781 injuries.

Final election turnout figures have yet to be released but it appears participation in this year's first-round presidential vote is at record low levels.

Voters stayed away, wary of repeated Taliban threats to attack polling stations and also despondent about the chances of their ballots being fairly counted in a country that has seen systemic and large-scale electoral fraud.

The Independent Election Commission, however, insists multiple safeguards including biometric verification will make this year's vote the cleanest yet.

Preliminary results are due Saturday, though officials have suggested this date will be pushed back a few days.

The race is seen as a two-horse steeplechase between President Ashraf Ghani and his top rival Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah.

If no one wins a majority of more than 50 per cent, the elections will go to a second round.

Hundreds of people were killed or wounded in violence related to Afghanistan's recent presidential election season as the Taliban sought to undermine the democratic process, a United Nations agency said Tuesday.

Hundreds of people were killed or wounded in violence related to Afghanistan's recent presidential election season as the Taliban sought to undermine the democratic process, a United Nations agency said Tuesday. The United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) reported that 85 people were killed and another 373 wounded in election violence during the period from June 8 to September 30. On polling day alone, 28 civilians were killed and 249 injured. Children accounted for more than one-third of the victims. Despite the high toll, Afghan security forces said election day was a success because the Taliban failed to pull off any large-scale attacks that stole the headlines. The majority of Taliban attacks involved the use of rockets, grenades and mortars, as well as homemade bombs planted near polling centres, including schools, the report found. On July 28, the same day as the election campaign started, militants targeted the office of Ghani's running mate Amrullah Saleh in Kabul, killing 21 people and wounding another 50. "These attacks, along with public statements made by the Taliban, revealed a deliberate campaign intended to undermine the electoral process and deprive Afghan citizens of their right to participate in this important political process, freely and without fear," Tadamichi Yamamoto, the U.N. secretary-general's special representative for Afghanistan, said in a statement. The casualty figures are actually a substantial improvement in the run-up to parliamentary elections held a year ago, when UNAMA tallied 226 deaths and 781 injuries. Final election turnout figures have yet to be released but it appears participation in this year's first-round presidential vote is at record low levels. Voters stayed away, wary of repeated Taliban threats to attack polling stations and also despondent about the chances of their ballots being fairly counted in a country that has seen systemic and large-scale electoral fraud. The Independent Election Commission, however, insists multiple safeguards including biometric verification will make this year's vote the cleanest yet. Preliminary results are due Saturday, though officials have suggested this date will be pushed back a few days. The race is seen as a two-horse steeplechase between President Ashraf Ghani and his top rival Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah. If no one wins a majority of more than 50 per cent, the elections will go to a second round.

Afghanistan election campaign witnessed 85 deaths, 373 injured civilians: United Nations

A Pentagon investigation has concluded that at least 105 civilians died in an anti-IS strike in the Iraqi city of Mosul in March, officials said Thursday, but they blamed the toll on a secondary explosion of jihadist munitions.

A US aircraft delivered a single precision-guided bomb into a building in west Mosul on March 17, with the aim of killing a pair of snipers on the second story of the structure in the al-Jadida neighbourhood, which at the time was under Islamic State control.

But the bomb also caused a large cache of IS explosives to detonate, leading to the catastrophic collapse of the building that had civilians sheltering downstairs, officials said.

&quot;The secondary explosion triggered a rapid failure of the structure which killed the two ISIS snipers, 101 civilians sheltered in the bottom floors of the structure and four civilians in the neighbouring structure to the west,&quot; said US Air Force Brigadier General Matt Isler, the lead investigator.

Isler said another 36 civilians who are &quot;believed to be connected&quot; to the building remained unaccounted for, but they had likely fled the area shortly before the strike. He said he was &quot;very confident&quot; in the final toll.

It was the single deadliest incident for civilians stemming from a coalition strike since anti-IS operations in Iraq and Syria began nearly three years ago.&nbsp;

The United States had previously only acknowledged that it &quot;probably&quot; had a role in the civilian deaths.&nbsp;

The investigation comes amid broader claims that US forces under President Donald Trump are killing more civilians as the military fulfills a plan to &quot;annihilate&quot; the Islamic State group.&nbsp;

The Pentagon denies this and says its rules of engagement remain unchanged and insists its precision-targeting abilities are the best in the world.

Defeat Islamic State

Officials say the US takes every precaution to avoid hitting civilians, including by aborting missile strikes at the last moment if a civilian unexpectedly wanders into the target zone.

&quot;Our condolences go out to all those that were affected,&quot; said Major General Joe Martin.&nbsp;

&quot;The coalition takes every feasible measure to protect civilians from harm. The best way to protect civilians is to defeat ISIS.&quot;

No condolence payments have been made, Isler said, though such a move has not been ruled out.

According to Isler, Iraqi counterterrorism service (CTS) troops had been moving into the al-Jadida neighbourhood in west Mosul when they came under fire from the IS snipers.&nbsp;

Mosul was a former IS bastion but the jihadists now only control about 10 percent of the city.

Bad weather had kept surveillance drones from gathering video of the area for two days, and CTS and coalition forces -- not knowing civilians were in the building -- ultimately called in a strike, Isler said.

The precision-guided bomb selected -- a GBU-38 carrying 192 pounds of explosives -- was rigged to cause only localised damage to the building, but it ignited a large amount of ordnance which, unbeknownst to the coalition, IS fighters had previously placed inside.

&quot;Post-blast analysis detected residues common to explosives used by ISIS, but not consistent with the explosive content of a GBU-38 munition,&quot; Central Command said in a statement.

&quot;Engineering and weapons analysis indicates that the GBU-38 should have resulted in no more than 16-20 percent damage to the structure, localised to the front of the second floor.&quot;

Officials said IS may have deliberately rigged the building to explode and then used the snipers to intentionally provoke an air strike.

As of the most recent Centcom official tally, a total of 396 civilians had been killed since the beginning of the bombing campaign against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria nearly three years ago.

The 105 figure from the March incident would push that number beyond 500.

Airwars, a London-based collective of journalists and researchers that tracks civilian deaths in Iraq and Syria, claims a minimum of 3,350 people have died in coalition strikes.&nbsp;

(AFP)

The Pentagon investigation blamed the toll on a secondary explosion of jihadist munitions

A Pentagon investigation has concluded that at least 105 civilians died in an anti-IS strike in the Iraqi city of Mosul in March, officials said Thursday, but they blamed the toll on a secondary explosion of jihadist munitions. A US aircraft delivered a single precision-guided bomb into a building in west Mosul on March 17, with the aim of killing a pair of snipers on the second story of the structure in the al-Jadida neighbourhood, which at the time was under Islamic State control. But the bomb also caused a large cache of IS explosives to detonate, leading to the catastrophic collapse of the building that had civilians sheltering downstairs, officials said. "The secondary explosion triggered a rapid failure of the structure which killed the two ISIS snipers, 101 civilians sheltered in the bottom floors of the structure and four civilians in the neighbouring structure to the west," said US Air Force Brigadier General Matt Isler, the lead investigator. Isler said another 36 civilians who are "believed to be connected" to the building remained unaccounted for, but they had likely fled the area shortly before the strike. He said he was "very confident" in the final toll. It was the single deadliest incident for civilians stemming from a coalition strike since anti-IS operations in Iraq and Syria began nearly three years ago. The United States had previously only acknowledged that it "probably" had a role in the civilian deaths. The investigation comes amid broader claims that US forces under President Donald Trump are killing more civilians as the military fulfills a plan to "annihilate" the Islamic State group. The Pentagon denies this and says its rules of engagement remain unchanged and insists its precision-targeting abilities are the best in the world. Defeat Islamic State Officials say the US takes every precaution to avoid hitting civilians, including by aborting missile strikes at the last moment if a civilian unexpectedly wanders into the target zone. "Our condolences go out to all those that were affected," said Major General Joe Martin. "The coalition takes every feasible measure to protect civilians from harm. The best way to protect civilians is to defeat ISIS." No condolence payments have been made, Isler said, though such a move has not been ruled out. According to Isler, Iraqi counterterrorism service (CTS) troops had been moving into the al-Jadida neighbourhood in west Mosul when they came under fire from the IS snipers. Mosul was a former IS bastion but the jihadists now only control about 10 percent of the city. Bad weather had kept surveillance drones from gathering video of the area for two days, and CTS and coalition forces -- not knowing civilians were in the building -- ultimately called in a strike, Isler said. The precision-guided bomb selected -- a GBU-38 carrying 192 pounds of explosives -- was rigged to cause only localised damage to the building, but it ignited a large amount of ordnance which, unbeknownst to the coalition, IS fighters had previously placed inside. "Post-blast analysis detected residues common to explosives used by ISIS, but not consistent with the explosive content of a GBU-38 munition," Central Command said in a statement. "Engineering and weapons analysis indicates that the GBU-38 should have resulted in no more than 16-20 percent damage to the structure, localised to the front of the second floor." Officials said IS may have deliberately rigged the building to explode and then used the snipers to intentionally provoke an air strike. As of the most recent Centcom official tally, a total of 396 civilians had been killed since the beginning of the bombing campaign against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria nearly three years ago. The 105 figure from the March incident would push that number beyond 500. Airwars, a London-based collective of journalists and researchers that tracks civilian deaths in Iraq and Syria, claims a minimum of 3,350 people have died in coalition strikes. (AFP)

At least 105 civilians died in anti-IS strike in Mosul in March: Pentagon

The US-led anti-jihadist coalition said Tuesday it &quot;probably&quot; played a role in civilian casualties in west Mosul, as the UN and Amnesty International called for greater efforts to protect civilians.

Hundreds of thousands of civilians are still inside west Mosul, caught up in deadly fighting between the Islamic State (IS) group and Iraqi forces who are backed by coalition air strikes in the battle to retake the area from the jihadists.

West Mosul is both smaller and more densely populated than the city&#39;s east, meaning that this stage of the battle poses a greater danger to civilians than those that came before.

&quot;We probably had a role in those casualties,&quot; Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, the commander of the US-led operation against IS, told reporters in a phone briefing from Baghdad, referring to civilians killed and wounded by aerial bombing in west Mosul.

&quot;If those innocents were killed, it was an unintentional accident of war,&quot; he said.

Townsend described the fighting in the narrow streets of Iraq&#39;s second city as the &quot;most significant urban combat&quot; since World War II and &quot;probably the toughest and most brutal close-quarters combat that I have experienced in my 35 years of service&quot;.

The coalition had previously said it carried out a strike on March 17 in an area of west Mosul in which civilian casualties were reported, and that it had opened an investigation.

Iraq is also investigating civilian deaths in west Mosul, but has sought to place the blame on IS.

UN rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said Tuesday that more than 300 civilians have been killed in west Mosul since February 17.

IS has targeted civilians and used them as human shields, while strikes by anti-IS forces have also left civilians dead.

UN human rights chief Zeid Ra&#39;ad Al Hussein called on Iraqi and US-led coalition forces &quot;to undertake an urgent review of tactics to ensure that the impact on civilians is reduced to an absolute minimum&quot;.

IS&#39;s &quot;strategy of using children, men and women to shield themselves from attack is cowardly and disgraceful. It breaches the most basic standards of human dignity and morality,&quot; he said.

Amnesty&#39;s Donatella Rovera said field research in east Mosul -- which was recaptured from IS in January -- showed &quot;an alarming pattern of US-led coalition air strikes which have destroyed whole houses with entire families inside&quot;.

&nbsp;

Jihadists deployed among civilians

&quot;The high civilian toll suggests that coalition forces... have failed to take adequate precautions to prevent civilian deaths, in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law,&quot; she said.

In the east, the Iraqi forces adopted a strategy of encouraging civilians to stay at home, dropping leaflets into the city with safety instructions for residents.

&quot;The fact that Iraqi authorities repeatedly advised civilians to remain at home instead of fleeing the area, indicates that coalition forces should have known that these strikes were likely to result in a significant numbers of civilian casualties,&quot; Rovera said.

Amnesty quoted Waad Ahmad al-Tai, an east Mosul resident, as saying six members of his extended family -- including his nine-year-old son and three-year-old daughter -- were killed after they followed government advice not to flee the city.

&quot;We heard these instructions on the radio...Also leaflets were dropped by planes. This is why we stayed in our homes,&quot; he said.

Amnesty said that, in many cases it investigated, east Mosul residents said IS fighters had been present in or near houses targeted in the strikes.

In one case, five members of a family and their neighbour were killed in a raid on a house where IS fighters were hiding but the jihadists survived that attack, Amnesty quoted survivors as saying. That pattern has also been repeated in west Mosul, according to witnesses.

Two witnesses who have now fled the city said that a building with around 170 people inside was destroyed in the Mosul al-Jadida area.

One of them said that IS snipers had fired on Iraqi forces, after which an aircraft targeted them with a missile. Another man said that IS placed snipers atop a house where he was residing with more than 20 relatives.

He was told that an air strike hit the house, an attack he survived because he was away at the time.

More than 200,000 civilians have fled west Mosul since the battle for the area began, according to Iraqi authorities.

(AFP)

West Mosul is smaller and more densely populated than the city's east, meaning this stage of the battle poses a greater danger to civilians

The US-led anti-jihadist coalition said Tuesday it "probably" played a role in civilian casualties in west Mosul, as the UN and Amnesty International called for greater efforts to protect civilians. Hundreds of thousands of civilians are still inside west Mosul, caught up in deadly fighting between the Islamic State (IS) group and Iraqi forces who are backed by coalition air strikes in the battle to retake the area from the jihadists. West Mosul is both smaller and more densely populated than the city's east, meaning that this stage of the battle poses a greater danger to civilians than those that came before. "We probably had a role in those casualties," Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, the commander of the US-led operation against IS, told reporters in a phone briefing from Baghdad, referring to civilians killed and wounded by aerial bombing in west Mosul. "If those innocents were killed, it was an unintentional accident of war," he said. Townsend described the fighting in the narrow streets of Iraq's second city as the "most significant urban combat" since World War II and "probably the toughest and most brutal close-quarters combat that I have experienced in my 35 years of service". The coalition had previously said it carried out a strike on March 17 in an area of west Mosul in which civilian casualties were reported, and that it had opened an investigation. Iraq is also investigating civilian deaths in west Mosul, but has sought to place the blame on IS. UN rights office spokeswoman Ravina Shamdasani said Tuesday that more than 300 civilians have been killed in west Mosul since February 17. IS has targeted civilians and used them as human shields, while strikes by anti-IS forces have also left civilians dead. UN human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein called on Iraqi and US-led coalition forces "to undertake an urgent review of tactics to ensure that the impact on civilians is reduced to an absolute minimum". IS's "strategy of using children, men and women to shield themselves from attack is cowardly and disgraceful. It breaches the most basic standards of human dignity and morality," he said. Amnesty's Donatella Rovera said field research in east Mosul -- which was recaptured from IS in January -- showed "an alarming pattern of US-led coalition air strikes which have destroyed whole houses with entire families inside". Jihadists deployed among civilians "The high civilian toll suggests that coalition forces... have failed to take adequate precautions to prevent civilian deaths, in flagrant violation of international humanitarian law," she said. In the east, the Iraqi forces adopted a strategy of encouraging civilians to stay at home, dropping leaflets into the city with safety instructions for residents. "The fact that Iraqi authorities repeatedly advised civilians to remain at home instead of fleeing the area, indicates that coalition forces should have known that these strikes were likely to result in a significant numbers of civilian casualties," Rovera said. Amnesty quoted Waad Ahmad al-Tai, an east Mosul resident, as saying six members of his extended family -- including his nine-year-old son and three-year-old daughter -- were killed after they followed government advice not to flee the city. "We heard these instructions on the radio...Also leaflets were dropped by planes. This is why we stayed in our homes," he said. Amnesty said that, in many cases it investigated, east Mosul residents said IS fighters had been present in or near houses targeted in the strikes. In one case, five members of a family and their neighbour were killed in a raid on a house where IS fighters were hiding but the jihadists survived that attack, Amnesty quoted survivors as saying. That pattern has also been repeated in west Mosul, according to witnesses. Two witnesses who have now fled the city said that a building with around 170 people inside was destroyed in the Mosul al-Jadida area. One of them said that IS snipers had fired on Iraqi forces, after which an aircraft targeted them with a missile. Another man said that IS placed snipers atop a house where he was residing with more than 20 relatives. He was told that an air strike hit the house, an attack he survived because he was away at the time. More than 200,000 civilians have fled west Mosul since the battle for the area began, according to Iraqi authorities. (AFP)

US-led coalition 'probably' had role in Mosul civilian casualties

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