IRAQ: At least 80 people killed in multiple blasts in Baghdad as U.N. says over 34,000 civilians were killed in violence last year

The United Nations said on Tuesday (January 16) more than 34,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in violence last year and it chided the government for allowing the killers, some of them inside the security forces, to go unpunished. The latest figures were released as Baghdad was rocked by a series of blasts, many of them double bombs targetting rescuers. It was not clear if the attacks, among the bloodiest this month, were related to the hangings on Monday (January 15) of two aides to Saddam Hussein, which angered minority Sunni Arabs. A car bomb and a suicide bomber killed 60 people and wounded 110 more, including many students blown up as they waited for cars to take them home at the entrance to a university in Baghdad. A police source said a car bomb exploded near the main gate al-Mustansiriya University in an area where students wait for minibuses and cars to pick them up to go home. A suicide bomber then blew himself up near a second gate to the university as people fled the first explosion. Earlier in the day, a roadside bomb followed by a blast from a motorcycle rigged with explosives killed 15 people and wounded 70 near a Sunni mosque in central Baghdad. And a roadside bomb killed four people, including two policemen, and wounded 10 in the Karrada district of central Baghdad. Police had succeeded in defusing one roadside bomb near a communications centre when the second bomb went off, killing two police and two civilians. Three police were among the 10 people wounded. Police said gunmen killed another 10 people and wounded seven in a drive-by shooting in the northern Baghdad district of Binoog. And two people were killed and four injured during an Iraqi police raid in the town of Jurf al-Sakhr near Kerbala. Clashes erupted as police launched a raid on suspected insurgents. The United Nations said violence is taking a very heavy toll on the civilian population. "It is evident, however, that violence has not been contained but has continued to claim a very high number of innocent victims. During 2006, a total of 34,452 civilians have been violently killed and 36,685 wounded," the U.N. human rights chief in Baghdad, Gianni Magazzeni, told a news conference. He accused the government of failing to provide security and blamed some of the violence on militias colluding with or working inside the police and army. "The civilian population remains the main victim of the prevailing security situation. Law enforcement agencies do not provide effective protection to the population of Iraq and increasingly miliitias and criminal gangs act in collusion with or have infiltrated the security forces," Magazzeni added. The U.N. casualty figures are much higher than statistics issued by Iraqi government officials. The government itself branded the United Nations' last two-monthly report in November grossly exaggerated and banned its civil servants from releasing data. The government is preparing a security plan backed by U.S. reinforcements and billed as a "last chance" for Iraq to pull back from a sectarian civil war pitching Sunni rebels against Shi'ite militias and dragging in millions of armed civilians. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, with the help of some 20,000 more U.S. troops being deployed by President George W. Bush, is preparing a major crackdown on sectarian killers in Baghdad -- including militias loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and other fellow Shi'ite allies of Maliki.

ITN Source | January 16, 2007

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