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 The 289 dead and 559 injured included at least 30 killed and 37
injured in a U.S. air strike on a hospital run by Medecins Sans
Frontieres, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan
(UNAMA) said in a report.
It said the figures were likely to rise as further information
became available, noting that unstable security meant its officials
had been unable to conduct detailed investigations in Kunduz.
Medecins Sans Frontieres said on Saturday that its own count of the
death toll from the Kunduz hospital attack had risen to 42, a figure
UNAMA said it was verifying.
Apart from the losses in the air strike on Oct. 3, it said most
casualties had been caused from small arms fire or explosives during
heavy fighting in residential areas.
 "In most of these cases, UNAMA could not attribute the casualties to
a specific party to the conflict," it said, although it also
detailed reports of deliberate killings by the Taliban of civilians
including people associated with the government.
It also joined calls for an independent investigation into the
attack on the hospital, which it said may amount to a war crime if
it were proved to be deliberate.
An estimated 150,000 people were trapped in the city by the most
prolonged period of urban fighting in Afghanistan since the U.S.-led
campaign against the Taliban in 2001.
Some 13,000 families fled, adding to the hundreds of thousands
already displaced by violence and lack of security, UNAMA said.
The report detailed food shortages, lack of electricity, looting and
allegations of human rights abuses by fighters on both sides as well
as by other armed men who took advantage of the chaos.
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"The insecurity, absence of governance and the breakdown of rule of
law during this period resulted in a loss of protection of the most
basic human rights, including the rights to life and security of
person," it said.
"This chaos enabled an environment in which arbitrary killings, and
other forms of violence against civilians and civilian objects,
criminality and destruction of civilian property took place."
It said the Taliban had created a "climate of fear" with systematic
searches for women's rights activists and civilians working for
human rights organizations which prompted many to flee the city.
However, it did not find evidence of any large scale or systematic
violence against women and girls by the hardline Islamist movement,
which has strongly denied harming women deliberately.
(Reporting by James Mackenzie; Editing by Robert Birsel and Ros
Russell)
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