| Wednesday, January 17, 2007 |
| Civilian casualties in Iraq over 34,000: UN report |
With over 80 people being killed in three bomb attacks around Baghdad, capital of Iraq, on Tuesday, a United Nations report estimates that more than 34,000 civilians were killed across Iraq in 2006.
The UN also warned that the violence was likely to continue in the absence of a functioning justice system in place.
Two bombs exploded in quick succession at Baghdad University as students were leaving classes, killing at least 60 people and wounding 110 others.
In two other bomb attacks, at least 15 people died and 70 others were wounded by another pair of bombs in central Baghdad in a market, near a Sunni mosque. The mosque was not believed to be the target.
Two members of an elite police bomb disposal unit and two civilians were killed when a pair of bombs, which the officers were trying to defuse, exploded.
The UN report gives a chilling picture of the civilian deaths, underscoring the depth of the security problem facing the US military officials as they prepare to deploy more troops in Iraq as a part of a new strategy that, for the first time, makes the protection of civilians the war effort's highest priority.
The report by the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq was based on figures provided by from the Medico-Legal Institute in Baghdad and hospitals around the country. It is estimated that 34,452 civilians were violently killed in 2006 – an average of 94 a day – and that 36,685 others were wounded.
The UN report said the level of violence appeared to have declined toward the end of 2006 – 3,462 violent deaths were recorded for November and 2,914 for December, compared with 3,345 in September and 3,702 in October.
The head of the UN mission, Gianni Magazzeni, told reporters that a cycle of revenge killings and reprisals has escalated in the absence of an effective and impartial justice system. "If people don't have a sense that justice is done, unfortunately this sectarian violence is likely to continue," Magazzeni arned.
The UN report spoke of a "growing sense of impunity for ongoing human rights violations," a development which "leads people to take law into their hands and rely on militias or criminal gangs. The law-enforcement agencies are ineffective and militias and criminal gangs increasingly work in collusion with or have infiltrated the official security forces."
The report was also critical of American and other international troops, whose operations, it said, "cause severe suffering to the local population." It called on the coalition troops to "refrain from any excessive use of force."
There is no official Iraqi estimate of civilian deaths. In an unofficial estimate during an official visit to Vienna in November, 2006, Iraq's Health Minister Ali al-Shimari had said 150,000 Iraqis had been killed in violence since the war began in 2003.Labels: iraq |
| posted by a correspondent @ 10:16 AM |
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