Dozens of people were killed in Iraq on Thursday as security officials said bitter sectarian attacks had claimed the lives of nearly 2 000 civilians throughout the country in January.
Meanwhile, a media watchdog group said that at least 65 media workers were killed and 20 kidnapped in the country in 2006, the most lethal year since the United States-led invasion in March 2003.
In Hilla, the capital of Babil province south of Baghdad, two makeshift bombs ripped through the city centre, killing at least 45 people and wounding 100, medical and security sources said.
In central Baghdad, six people were killed and 12 wounded when an explosion tore through a bus on the main road in Karrada district, a security official said, adding that women standing outside the bus were among the wounded.
Another car bomb in central Baghdad left three people dead and seven others wounded, he said, adding that two more people were killed in other attacks in the capital.
A security source said nearly 2 000 civilians were killed in January, mostly in sectarian violence, and added that the number of wounded was also significantly higher than in December.
He said that ”1 992 civilians were killed by violence in Iraq during the month of January”, speaking on condition of anonymity and citing health ministry figures.
These included dozens of unidentified bodies recovered each day across Iraq, he said.
A United Nations report last month said more than 34 400 Iraqis had been killed by sectarian violence between the February 22 2006 bombing of a Shi’ite shrine in Samarra and December 31.
On Thursday, the security source said that 586 ”terrorists”, or insurgent fighters, had also been killed and 1 921 arrested in January, up from December’s 314 killed and 1 034 detained.
Iraqi security forces suffered 95 dead — 55 police officers and 40 soldiers — last month, a decrease from 148 deaths in December, of whom 125 were police officers and 23 were soldiers.
Government spokesperson Ali al-Dabbagh declined to comment on the latest figures. He has said in the past that Baghdad cannot provide its own figures because of chronic insecurity in the country. — AFP
