BREAKING NEWS

UN: Over 1,000 Iraqis killed in July, highest monthly toll since 2008

By REUTERS

AUGUST 1, 2013 14:44

BAGHDAD - More than 1,000 Iraqis were killed in sectarian violence in July, the highest monthly death toll since 2008, the United Nations said on Thursday, as Sunni Islamist groups stepped up their insurgency against Iraq's Shi'ite-led government.

Most of the 1,057 victims were civilians, killed in a relentless campaign of bombings and shootings that some Iraqis fear could drag the country into another war.

"We haven't seen such numbers in more than five years, when the blind rage of sectarian strife that inflicted such deep wounds upon this country was finally abating," Gyorgy Busztin, acting UN envoy to Iraq, said in a statement.

He called on Iraqi leaders to take immediate and decisive action to stop the "senseless bloodshed" and prevent a return to the "dark days" of 2006-07, when the number of people killed per month sometimes exceeded 3,000.

In recent years violence has fallen and a steady rise in oil production has made the country richer, but the conflict in neighboring Syria has inflamed sectarian tensions across the region and invigorated Sunni insurgents in Iraq, including al-Qaida.

July's toll brought the number of people killed in militant attacks since the start of the year to 4,137.

The worst affected governorate was Baghdad, where 238 people were killed in July, followed by Salahuddin, Nineveh, Diyala, Kirkuk and Anbar.

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