KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – At least 617 people were killed and 537 wounded across Afghanistan in 2025, marking a rise of more than 50% from the previous year, according to a report by UK-based rights group Rawadari.
The group’s annual report, released on Wednesday, said the 1,154 total casualties resulted from targeted and suicide bombings, Pakistani airstrikes, landmine explosions, explosive remnants of war, and targeted or extrajudicial attacks.
Victims included former government employees and their families, journalists, civil society activists, protesters, women, children, tribal elders, and individuals accused of links to anti-Taliban groups.
Rawadari attributed much of the increase to intensified clashes between Pakistani forces and Taliban fighters, alongside Pakistani airstrikes in Kandahar, Helmand, Paktia, Paktika, and Khost provinces. In those five provinces alone, 324 civilians were killed or wounded, including 90 deaths—57 men, 13 women, and 20 children—and 234 injuries.
The report said such attacks violated key principles of international humanitarian law, including distinction, proportionality, and precaution, causing widespread civilian harm and damage to homes and public facilities.
According to the report, targeted suicide and explosive attacks killed 11 people and injured 44, a decline of more than 67% compared to 2024. Explosions from landmines and other remnants of war killed 79 people, including 43 children and six women, and wounded 85, a slight rise from 2024 and a sharp increase compared to 2023.
The report highlighted at least 611 civilians killed or wounded in targeted, suspicious, or extrajudicial attacks, an increase of over 40% from 2024. Victims were primarily former government employees, individuals accused of links to opposition groups, protesters, tribal elders, and local community figures. Among these, 378 civilians were killed or wounded in suspicious or extrajudicial attacks, including 257 deaths.
At least 80 former government employees were specifically targeted, slightly fewer than in 2024, while 40 civilians were killed by Taliban forces on accusations of cooperating with opposition groups, down from 2024 but nearly double the number recorded in 2023. The report also documented 11 deaths in Taliban-controlled prisons following severe torture, compared with 20 cases in 2024.
The report also highlighted a sharp increase in arbitrary detention and enforced disappearances. At least 2,559 people were unlawfully detained in 2025, more than double 2024’s figure of 885 and four times higher than 2023. Detainees included 138 former government employees, 77 civil society members and human rights defenders, including seven women, and 192 individuals accused of links to opposition groups.
According to the report, the Taliban detained 2,125 people in 2025, including 88 women, primarily for alleged breaches of their morality rules on dress, beards, and personal conduct.
Rawadari also documented 66 cases of enforced disappearances across 12 provinces, representing an increase of nearly 30% compared to the 51 cases recorded in 2024. The victims were mainly former government employees, individuals accused of links to opposition groups, and some tribal or religious elders.
The report said Taliban authorities continued to implement their “cruel and inhuman” punishments, including public floggings and executions under qisas (retaliatory executions). At least 857 people, including 114 women, were publicly flogged in 2025, an increase of more than 60% compared to the previous year.
The report also documented six qisas executions carried out in Khost, Nimruz, Farah, and Badghis provinces. In addition, a Taliban court in Daykundi province sentenced a woman to stoning for giving birth to an “illegitimate child.” The report said the woman has appealed the ruling, and the sentence remains suspended.
Rawadari said its findings are based on interviews across 30 provinces and information gathered from victims, their relatives, eyewitnesses, and other local sources inside Afghanistan.
