34,000 civilians killed in Iraq in 2006
By DAMIEN CAVE and JOHN O’NEIL
January 16, 2007
BAGHDAD, Jan. 16 — More than 80 people died in a trio of bomb attacks around the capital today, as United Nations officials released a report estimating that more than 34,000 civilians were killed across Iraq last year and warning that the violence was “likely to continue” in the absence of a functioning justice system.
Two of the bombs exploded in quick succession at Baghdad University as students were leaving classes, killing at least 60 people and wounding at least 110, Interior Ministry officials said. One was detonated by a suicide bomber and one was placed in a car, but it was not clear in which order they were detonated.
At least 15 other people died and 70 were wounded by another pair of bombs in central Baghdad in a market devoted to motorcycle and stereo shops, not far from a Sunni mosque, officials said. The mosque was not believed to be the target. And two members of an elite police bomb disposal unit and two civilians were killed when the second of a pair of bombs the officers were working to defuse exploded.
Today’s violence and the U.N. report’s chilling portrait on civilian deaths underscored the depth of the security problem facing American military officials as they prepare to deploy more troops there as 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 estimated that 34,452 civilians were violently killed in 2006 — an average of 94 a day — and that a addition 36,685 were wounded.
The report said that the level of violence appeared to have declined toward the end of the year — 3,462 violent deaths were recorded for November and 2,914 for December, compared with 3,345 in September and 3,702 in October — although it noted that some provinces had not yet reported December figures.
The head of the 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,” Mr. Magazzeni said. “Ensuring accountability would go a long way to help turning the tide.”
The report described a “growing sense of impunity for on-going human rights violations,” a development that it said “leads people to take the law into their hands and rely on actions by militias or criminal gangs.”
The report also noted that law-enforcement agencies are ineffective and that 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.” Saying that limitations on freedom of movement and lack of access to basic services effect a large part of the population, it called on coalition troops to “refrain from any excessive use of force.”
The report released today found the killing centered in Baghdad, where it said more than 16,000 civilian deaths from violence were recorded. It noted that some parts of the country, notably in the Shiite-dominated south and in Kurdistan in the north, were “relatively safer.” But it also reported that some areas have become more violent recently, including the ethnically mixed northern cities of Mosul and Kirkuk.
Around the country, the report described a deteriorating situation for women and minorities, including Palestinians and Christians, and said that attacks on professional groups “continued unabated.”
Many of Iraq’s educated elite have fled the country, and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki paid a visit to Baghdad University late last year to urge students and professors not to leave in the face of continued violence.
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