U.N. Issues Grim Report on Iraq
The United Nations issued a somber human rights report Wednesday that focused on recent civilian deaths in Iraq, as at least 75 Iraqis were killed or found slain around the country.
Meanwhile, a top U.S. military spokesman said attacks against American troops had increased recently, as had killings by sectarian death squads that target civilians. He also said that American commanders expected violence to escalate even further during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which begins this weekend.
The report says 3,009 people were killed in Iraq during August, down from 3,590 in July. It warns that although the rate had declined at the beginning of the month, it had escalated again by month’s end, especially in Baghdad.
The current level of violence, the report says, “is challenging the very fabric of the country.”
The report also touches on other human rights issues. It notes that torture in official detention centers remains widespread; 300,000 people are displaced in Iraq; women are increasingly targets of violence in cases of “honor crimes”; and freedom of expression continues to suffer as a result of killings and intimidation of journalists.
The trend in the national civilian toll echoes recent statements by the Baghdad morgue, whose reports on deaths are often cited in tracking civilian casualties from sectarian fighting and the insurgency against the Iraqi government and the U.S.-led military.
These last few weeks have been even bloodier than usual in the capital, with a torrent of execution-style killings coming despite an American-led crackdown. But as U.S. commanders have focused on Baghdad, attackers have struck in northern and western parts of the country in what appears to be a coordinated campaign.
On Wednesday in Samarra, north of the capital, a suicide car bomber crashed into the home of a tribal leader who had recently denounced the Al Qaeda terrorist network. The blast killed 11 relatives but not the leader. Forty others were injured, authorities said.
In the oil-rich city of Kirkuk, also in the north, gunmen killed a government employee on his way to work, authorities said.
Eleven people were killed in attacks in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, and two civilians were killed in separate bombings in the south.
Attackers also inflicted heavy casualties in the capital.
A suicide bomber driving a truck detonated his explosives near a checkpoint in the Dora neighborhood in south Baghdad, killing three people and injuring 11. A roadside explosion targeting an American patrol in east Baghdad killed one civilian. Separate mortar attacks on a checkpoint and a house injured eight people, according to police.
Two U.S. soldiers died in the capital in separate accidents Tuesday and Wednesday, and a third was shot and killed in northeast Baghdad on Wednesday, U.S. military statements said.
Police recovered 46 bodies in and around the capital. Some of the victims bore signs of torture. Many were blindfolded, handcuffed and had been shot, authorities said.
Iraqi security forces, especially police and special forces affiliated with the Interior Ministry, are widely believed to have been infiltrated by Shiite Muslim militias and have been accused of being behind many of the execution-style killings. But American commanders on Wednesday said they had scant evidence that ministry personnel were behind the death squads.
“Initially, there were a lot of allegations that death squads were not only coming out of Ministry of Interior forces but also organized by the Ministry of Interior,” Army Maj. Gen. Joseph Peterson, who is in charge of training Iraqi police, told reporters during a news briefing.
The U.S. military has “not identified any Ministry of Interior personnel as a part of the death squad members and leaders that we have picked up,” Peterson said, adding that “this seems to counter the initial allegations discrediting them.”
At the same briefing, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the top military spokesman in Iraq, said the number of bombing attacks against American troops had increased since a Sept. 7 statement by the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, Abu Ayyub Masri.
Caldwell said the military expected an increased flow of foreign fighters into Iraq during Ramadan, which has been a period of increased violence.
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Times staff writer Saif Hameed and a special correspondent in Samarra contributed to this report.
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