ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — The number of Pakistani civilians killed in militant attacks rose by a third in 2009, compared with the previous year, according to a new research report, a toll that was driven higher by a surge of suicide bombings against civilian targets.
The report, released this week by the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, an independent research group based in Islamabad that tracks security issues, found that 3,021 Pakistanis were killed in insurgent attacks, 33 percent more than in 2008.
Pakistan’s Interior Ministry said the number of deaths totaled 1,674, lower than the institute’s count, but its director, Muhammad Amir Rana, argued that its data is more comprehensive, drawing on local media reports, which its employees double check, as well as official sources. The reports provide one of the few comprehensive analyses of civilian casualties in Pakistan, a growing concern as the insurgency here grinds into another year.
Militants carried out 87 suicide attacks in 2009, up from 63 the previous year, according to the institute, with civilian centers increasingly a target, including mosques, a university, and public markets. The bombings, which tend to inflict harm over a wide area, helped account for the 60 percent rise in injuries to 7,334.
The institute began issuing the reports in 2006, Mr. Rana said, an effort to give a clearer picture of militancy in Pakistan. Since then, the number of Pakistanis killed in militant attacks has more than tripled.
The overwhelming majority of the suicide bombings last year were in the Northwest Frontier Province, a populous area in the western of Pakistan that borders Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas, where the militants are strong.
In a counter trend, the tribal areas, where the military has opened operation against the militants, saw a drop in bombings from militants — seven, compared to 16 the previous year.
Punjab, the most populous province and the military and political heart of the country, suffered 15 suicide attacks, the second-highest number in the country, up from eight in 2008, but far below the 52 that militants conducted in the Norh West Frontier Province.
Punjab, ethnically distict from the border regions in the mountainous west, had been relatively untouched by violence until recently. The surge in bombings last year shocked Pakistanis and helped turn public opinion and media coverage against the Taliban, though anger at the government and the United States also spiked.
In all, researchers counted 12,632 deaths from violence in 2009, of which about half were deaths associated with the Pakistani military’s campaigns against Taliban militants throughout 2009. The military keeps specific tallies of its own dead, though militant casualties are more difficult to track and are often based on estimates and not body counts in the field. Battlefields are rarely accessible to journalists.
Also included in the tally were 667 people — mostly civilians — killed in American drone strikes, the report said. Another 2,000 were killed in non-militant violence, including political violence and tribal fighting.
Though the civilian toll, which includes police officers and other civilian law enforcement agencies, seems high, it is still far lower than the 3,000 civilians killed per month in Iraq — a country with a population a fraction of Pakistan’s — in 2006.
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