Iraq violence kills 2500
ACTS of violence have killed nearly 2500 people and forced more than 85,000 to flee their homes in Iraq, the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq said today in a March-April report on the human rights situation.
The fatality count was comprised by death certificates issued by the Baghdad morgue, the report said.
“The Medico-Legal Institute in Baghdad issued 1294 death certificates in March and 1155 in April”, the majority of which had been deaths caused by gunshot wounds, it said.
“As a result of the pervasive violence, Iraqis continue to leave their areas of residence, either voluntarily or as a result of violence or threats by insurgents, militias and other armed groups,” it said.
Citing the International Organisation of Migration, the report stated 14,302 families had been displaced since the February 22 destruction of a Shiite shrine in Samarra that precipitated a rash of sectarian killing.
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At least 22 killed in Iraq unrest
At least 22 people were killed Tuesday in attacks including a car bombing on a busy Baghdad street, marring the first week of Iraq’s new cabinet which has set restoring security as top priority.
The car bomb in the south-eastern district of Baghdad, al-Jadeeda targeting a police patrol, killed five people and wounded seven, an interior ministry official said.
The neighbourhood has been hit repeatedly over the past three days.
In the main northern city of Mosul, a family of blacksmiths was targeted when gunmen drove up next to their car and opened fire, killing four and wounding one, police said.
Also in Mosul, a former official of the Baath party which ruled Iraq under Saddam Hussein was killed in a drive-by shooting outside his home.
Three day labourers on their way to work were also killed when gunmen in a car raked their mini-bus with bullets on the road from Baquba to Khalis, north-east of the capital, police said.
East of Baquba, in Balad Ruz, a bomb near the courthouse killed a 10-year-old boy and wounded two others.
In the northern oil centre of Kirkuk, a member of President Jalal Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan party working for the city education department was gunned down as he drove away from his home in the northern, oil-rich city.
In west Baghdad, gunmen opened fire on three elderly men, one of whom was blind and another disabled, killing them all.
In the city centre, a mortar round struck near the heavily fortified Green Zone administrative compound, killing one person and wounding four.
In the restive Palestine Street district, technology professor Ali Hussein Ali and an industry ministry employee were killed in separate drive-by shootings.
In Amiriyah on the capital’s western outskirts, one person was killed and four wounded when a minibus hit a roadside bomb.
Three corpses were found in Baghdad, one of them a 10-year-old boy, police said.
The boy, who was kidnapped from the southern neighbourhood of Dura on Monday, had been tortured before being shot in the head.
Bomb kills eleven outside Shiite mosque in Baghdad
BAGHDAD, Iraq A security official in Iraq says a bomb on a motorcycle has exploded in the courtyard of a Shiite (SHEE’-eyet) mosque in northern Baghdad, killing eleven people.
Insurgents keep U.S. at bay in Ramadi
RAMADI, Iraq – Whole neighborhoods are lawless, too dangerous for police. Some roads are so bomb-laden that U.S. troops won’t use them. Guerrillas attack U.S. troops nearly every time they venture out – and hit their bases with gunfire, rockets or mortars when they don’t.
Though not powerful enough to overrun U.S. positions, insurgents here in the heart of the Sunni Muslim triangle have fought undermanned U.S. and Iraqi forces to a virtual stalemate.
“It’s out of control,” says Army Sgt. 1st Class Britt Ruble, behind the sandbags of an observation post in the capital of Anbar province. “We don’t have control of this … we just don’t have enough boots on the ground.”
Iraq doctor brings evidence of US napalm at Fallujah
EVIDENCE to support controversial claims that napalm has been used by US forces in Iraq has been brought to Australia by an Iraqi doctor.
Dr Salam Ismael, of the Baghdad-based group Doctors for Iraq, said the evidence pointed to the use of napalm on civilians during the second siege of Fallujah in November 2004.
It is contained in film and photographs that doctors took of bodies they collected when they were finally allowed to enter the city after being barred for three days of the military operation.
“We said that napalm had been used, because napalm is a bomb which is a fuel bomb that burns only on the exposed part of the body, so that the clothes will not be affected,” Dr Ismael said from Perth at the start of a speaking tour.