KABUL (Dispatches) — Last year was the most lethal for Afghan civilians since the American-led war began here in late 2001, with the Taliban and other insurgent groups causing the vast majority of noncombatant deaths, according to a United Nations survey released Wednesday.

The UN report said that 2,412 civilians were killed in 2009, a jump of 14 percent over the previous year. Another 3,566 Afghan civilians were wounded, the report found.
The growing number of civilian deaths reflects the intensification of the Afghan war over the same period: American and NATO combat deaths jumped from 295 to 520 over the past year, and the Taliban are more active than at any point in the past eight years.
But the most striking aspect of the UN report was the shift in responsibility for the deaths of Afghan civilians. The survey found that the Taliban and other insurgents killed three times more civilians than the American-led coalition and Afghan government forces last year.
The 1,630 civilians killed by insurgents represented a 40 increase over the previous year — and two-thirds of the civilians killed. Most of those civilian deaths, the survey found, were caused by suicide bombings, homemade bombs and executions.
By contrast, the number of civilians killed by the American-led coalition and Afghan government forces in 2009 fell 28 percent. The coalition and Afghan forces killed 596 civilians, about a quarter of the total number killed last year.
----------French casualties
A French soldier was on Wednesday killed in an attack on a convoy in Afghanistan, the third death this week among French troops serving in the insurgency-wracked country, officials said.
Two other French soldiers were wounded in the explosives attack on their armored vehicle in the Mahmud Raqi region of eastern Afghanistan, the French presidency said in a statement.
The latest death brought to 39 the number of French soldiers who have died in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001.
----------Obama wants $33b for war
According to a report by the Associated Press U.S. President Barrack Obama plans to ask Congress for an additional $33 billion to fight unpopular war in Afghanistan and Iraq, on top of a record for $708 billion for the Defense Department next year.
The administration also plans to tell Congress next month that its central military objectives for the next four years will include winning the current wars while preventing new ones and that its core missions will include both counterinsurgency and counterterrorism operations.
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