Taliban-linked militants caused around 64 percent of all violent child deaths last year, the Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM) said in a report.
Children were also press-ganged, sexually exploited, deprived of health and education, and illegally detained by all sides in a war that is dragging into its ninth year since the US-led invasion toppled the Taliban regime.
"At least three children were killed in war-related incidents every day in 2009 and many others suffered in diverse but mostly unreported ways," ARM director Ajmal Samadi said.
Children died in suicide attacks and roadside bombings -- at the crux of the Taliban's arsenal against US, NATO and Afghan troops fighting the increasingly virulent insurgency as it spreads across the impoverished country.
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