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Iraq Puts Civilian Toll at 12,000
BAGHDAD, June 2 -- Insurgent violence has claimed the lives of 12,000 Iraqis over the past 18 months, Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said Thursday, giving the first official count for the largest category of victims of bombings, ambushes and other increasingly deadly attacks.
| You mean it wasn't 100,000? I'm shocked. This works out to about 20 people a day. |
At least 36 more Iraqi civilians, security force members and officials were killed Thursday in attacks that underscored the ruthlessness and growing randomness of much of the violence. Thursday's violence demonstrated the ability of insurgents to keep up small attacks despite a week-old security operation in Baghdad billed as the most aggressive yet by Iraq's new government, in office for less than two months. The actions are meant to expose insurgent hideouts in the city, he told reporters from some foreign news organizations, adding, "Within the next few months, we can deal with all of the killings and assassinations."
| That sounds a little optimistic. |
Interior Ministry statistics showed 12,000 civilians killed by insurgents in the last year and a half, Jabr said. The figure breaks down to an average of more than 20 civilians killed by bombings and other attacks each day. Authorities estimate that more than 10,500 of the victims were Shiite Muslims, based on the locations of the deaths, Jabr said. There have been 1,663 U.S. military deaths since the United States led the liberation invasion of Iraq. Bombings and other terrorist insurgent strikes have killed thousands of Iraqi security force members.
Jabr said the government figures showed that Shiites had suffered the bulk of insurgent attacks. No Sunni Muslim mosques, for example, had been destroyed, he said.
| Well of course not. You don't hit your own armories. |
Iraq's insurgency is led largely by Ba'athists members of the Sunni Arab minority that was toppled from power with Saddam Hussein. Foreign Arab fighters are largely blamed for the suicide bombings that now claim most of the lives.
Jabr, in some of his first extended remarks to reporters since becoming interior minister, said he saw no legitimacy in the cause of the Sunni Arab fighters. "I have not seen any 'resistance,' " Jabr said in response to a question about clemency for so-called resistance fighters who lay down their arms. "There is terror, and all sides have agreed that anyone raising guns and killing Iraqis is a terrorist."
| Give that man a cigar for speaking the unvarnished truth. |
Jabr said the new government was trying to reform the Interior Ministry, including expelling officials and officers found to have tortured detainees or others. As an opposition member under Hussein, he said, he had lost 10 members of his family to torture. "I would not accept that anyone practice torture against anyone," he said, adding that he would "personally follow up" on all such allegations.
Jabr also denied reports that members of the Badr militia, Shiite fighters trained in exile in Iran, were complicit in the killing of Sunni clerics last month. Investigation showed that no Badr members were involved, he said. The true killers are "terrorists who are killing Shiite clerics and Sunnis to incite strife," he said.
Posted by: Steve White 2005-06-04 |
