A suicide bombing at a wedding, a deadly airstrike on a village, grenades in a mosque — hundreds of Afghan civilians are dying violently this summer, while the Taliban and the NATO coalition wage verbal warfare.

A U.N. report says 1,145 civilians were killed and 1,954 others injured during the first half of the year, 80 percent of them by militants.

But like other aspects of this decade-long war, facts are often obscured by perception and propaganda.

That has left both sides locked in a battle of words, crafted to win the Afghan public's support.

The foreign forces and Taliban fighters have been issuing dueling statements ever since the conflict began more than a decade ago. Civilian casualties are the latest focus of the information war.

In a message ahead of Eid al-Fitr, the feast that marks the end of Ramadan this weekend, Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar instructed his fighters once again to avoid killing or wounding Afghan civilians.