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The War Profiteers - War Crimes, Kidnappings,
Torture and Big Money |
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January 3rd,
2007 - Iraq: 12,000 Civilians Killed in ‘06 |
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Iraq: 12,000 Civilians
Killed in '06 By Steven R. Hurst The Associated Press Wednesday, January 3, 2007; 4:13 AM Baghdad, Iraq - The number
of civilians killed in the violence in Iraq rose sharply over the last three
months, accounting for 5,000, or about 40 percent, of the more than 12,000
who died in 2006, the Iraqi government says. In the third full year since
the U.S.-led invasion, only about half as many Iraqi soldiers died in 2006 as
American troops, the government reported Tuesday. But the number of Iraqi
security forces killed jumped to 1,539 - nearly double the American death
count of 823 for the year - when the deaths of police, who conduct
paramilitary operations, are added to the number of slain Iraqi soldiers. The civilian toll of 12,357
coupled with the security force deaths bring the overall figure reported by
the ministries of Health, Defense and Interior to 13,896 - 162 more than the
tally kept by The Associated Press. The AP count, assembled from
its daily news reports, was always believed to be substantially lower than
the actual number of deaths because the news cooperative does not have daily
access to official accounting by the Iraqi ministries. Many deaths were
thought to have gone unreported by AP. Counts kept by other groups,
including the United Nations, list far higher death tolls, which are disputed
by the Iraqi government. While the U.S. government
and military provide no death totals for Iraqis, the U.N. Assistance Ministry
for Iraq, UNAMI, does keep a count based on reports it gathers from the
Baghdad morgue, Ministry of Health, and Medico-Legal Institute. The figures for November and
December are not yet available from the U.N. But as of the end of October,
the organization had reported 26,782 deaths in the first 10 months of 2006,
nearly double what the Iraqi government and the AP reported for the entire
year. In its last report, the U.N.
said 3,709 Iraqi civilians were killed in October alone and that citizens
were fleeing the country at a pace of 100,000 each month. The organization
estimated at least 1.6 million Iraqis had left since the war began in March
2003. At the time of the last U.N.
report, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh called it "inaccurate
and exaggerated" because it was not based on official government
reports. The U.N. report said Iraq's
heavily armed Shiite militias were gaining strength and influence and that
torture was rampant, despite the Iraqi government's vow to reduce human
rights abuses. "Hundreds of bodies
continued to appear in different areas of Baghdad - handcuffed, blindfolded
and bearing signs of torture and execution-style killing," the last
UNAMI report said. "Many witnesses reported that perpetrators wear
militia attire and even police or army uniforms." The two primary militias in
Iraq are the military wings of the country's strongest Shiite political
groups, on which Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is heavily dependent.
Al-Maliki has repeatedly rejected U.S. demands that he disband the heavily
armed groups, especially the Mahdi Army of radical anti-American cleric
Muqtada al-Sadr. "I think the type of
violence is different in the past few months," Gianni Magazzeni, the
UNAMI chief in Baghdad, said when the last report was issued in late
November. "There was a great increase in sectarian violence in
activities by terrorists and insurgents, but also by militias and criminal
gangs." He noted that religious
clashes have been common since Sunni Arab insurgents bombed a major Shiite
shrine on Feb. 22 in Samarra, north of Baghdad. UNAMI's Human Rights Office
continued to receive reports that Iraqi police and security forces have
either been infiltrated by or act in collusion with militias, the report
said. It said that while sectarian
violence is the main cause of the civilian killings, Iraqis also continue to
be the victims of terrorist acts, roadside bombs and drive-by shootings.
Others have been caught in the crossfire between rival gangs. In its September 2006 issue,
The Lancet, an independent and authoritative journal, published a study on
mortality rates in Iraq. The study estimated that
654,965 excess Iraqi deaths, including 601,027 from violence, had occurred in
Iraq since the invasion of the country in March 2003. The "confidence
range" for the number of excess Iraqi deaths because of violence has
been estimated at between 426,369 and 793,663, with 601,027 as the median
number. The U.S. government and Iraq
as well as others, including the Iraq Body Count, an organization that has
conducted other types of surveys, denied the validity of the study's
findings. The Iraqi Minister of
Health, in a statement made in Vienna in early November, indicated that as
many as 150,000 Iraqi civilians might have been violently killed since 2003.
But there are no known statistics for the early months of the U.S.-led
invasion. © 2007 The Associated Press External link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/03/AR2007010300144.html |