KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) Rebuilding Afghanistan has cost hundreds of lives, according to a new report released Tuesday by a U.S. government watchdog that monitors the billions of dollars Washington spends in the war-ravaged country.

The Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, John F. Sopko, says his report is the first to look at the human cost of rebuilding Afghanistan following the 2001 U.S.-led invasion that toppled the Taliban. The casualties it chronicled were the result of Taliban and other militant attacks on reconstruction projects since 2002. Such projects are often seen as easy targets. The SIGAR report did not include accidental or other deaths associated with reconstruction projects.

The findings come amid renewed U.S.-led peace talks with the Taliban aimed at opening the way for withdrawing American troops.

U.S. Congress created the office of SIGAR to ferret out waste and corruption in the billions of dollars America spends in Afghanistan. The watchdogs reports had previously focused almost exclusively on the financial costs of rebuilding the war-torn country.

For years, SIGAR has spent considerable effort to track the financial costs of reconstruction and stabilization activities in Afghanistan, said Sopko in a preamble to the report. However, little effort has been made up to now to track the human costs the number of people killed, wounded, or kidnapped to accomplish these activities.

The report found that 2,214 people have been killed, most of them Afghans, in largely U.S.-led projects to rebuild the country. Those deaths included 284 Americans, both civilian and military. Another 2,291 people were wounded in projects from road construction, to building schools and health clinics around Afghanistan.