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UN Raps Iraq for Withholding "Grim" Civilian Toll    [

    UN: Baghdad Security Operation Has Failed
    The Irish Examiner UK

    Wednesday 25 April 2007

    Sectarian violence continued to claim the lives of a large number of Iraqi civilians in Sunni Arab and Shiite neighbourhoods of Iraq's capital, despite the coalition's new Baghdad security plan, the UN said today.

    In its first human rights report since the security plan was launched on February 14 – and began increasing US and Iraqi troops levels in the capital - the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) said civilian casualties in the daily violence between January and March remained high, concentrated in and around Baghdad.

    American troops are facing increasing danger as they step up their presence in outposts and police stations in Baghdad and areas surrounding the city, as part of the security crackdown to which US President George Bush has committed an extra 30,000 troops.

    Thousands of Iraqi soldiers are also being deployed in the streets of the capital in an attempt to pacify it.

    "While government officials claimed an initial drop in the number of killings in the latter half of February following the launch of the Baghdad security plan, the number of reported casualties rose again in March," the study said.

    But UNAMI also said that for the first time since it began issuing quarterly reports on the human rights situation in Iraq, the new January 1-March 31 one did not contain overall mortality figures from Iraq's Ministry of Health because it refused to release them.

    
"UNAMI emphasises again the utmost need for the Iraqi government to operate in a transparent manner, and does not accept the government's suggestion that UNAMI used the (previous) mortality figures in an inappropriate fashion," the report said.

    The UN agency said that after the publication of its last human rights report about Iraq on January 16, Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's office told UNAMI its mortality figures were exaggerated, "although they were in fact official figures compiled and provided by a government ministry".

    The new UNAMI report said that on March 1 Iraq's Ministry of Interior announced that 1,646 civilians were killed in Iraq in February, most of them in Baghdad, but that "it is unclear on what basis these figures were compiled."

    UNAMI said that even though its current report's evidence could not be numerically substantiated with government figures, it showed continued high levels of violence throughout the reporting period, including large scale indiscriminate killings and assassinations by insurgents, militias and other armed groups.

    "In February and March, sectarian violence claimed the lives of large numbers of civilians, including women and children, in both Shia and Sunni neighbourhoods of Baghdad," the report said.

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    UN Raps Iraq for Withholding "Grim" Civilian Toll
    Yara Bayoumy
    Reuters

    Wednesday 25 April 2007

    Baghdad - The United Nations accused Iraq on Wednesday of withholding sensitive civilian casualty figures because it fears they would be used to paint a "very grim" picture of a worsening humanitarian crisis.

    Violence continued as a suicide attacker walked into a police station in volatile Diyala province and detonated a bomb, killing nine and wounding 16, police said.

    Iraq's military also said it was altering a U.S. plan to enclose a Sunni enclave in Baghdad with high concrete walls, after criticism that it would fan sectarian tension. Some residents had likened the project to Israel's West Bank barrier.

    The United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) said Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government would not release data on civilian deaths amid spiraling sectarian violence between majority Shi'ites and once dominant Sunni Arabs.

    "UNAMI emphasizes again the utmost need for the Iraqi government to operate in a transparent manner," the mission said in its latest report on human rights in Iraq.

    U.N. officials said they were given no official reason why their requests for specific official data had been turned down. Only broad percentages were available.

    "We were told that the government was becoming increasingly concerned about the figures being used to portray the situation as very grim," United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq (UNAMI) human rights officer Ivana Vuco told a news conference.

    Maliki, whose administration has previously accused UNAMI of exaggerating civilian deaths, rejected the report as unbalanced.

    "The Iraqi government announces its deep reservation on the report, which lacks accuracy in the information presented, lacks credibility in many of its points and lacks balance in its presentation of the human rights situation in Iraq," a statement from his office said.

    Humanitarian Crisis

    In January, UNAMI said 34,452 Iraqi civilians were killed and more than 36,000 wounded in 2006, figures that were much higher than any statistics issued by the government.

    On Wednesday it said Iraq faced "immense security challenges" and a "rapidly worsening humanitarian crisis".

    The U.N. report expressed concern at the treatment of thousands of suspects detained under a major security crackdown in Baghdad, and about reports of collusion between Iraqi forces and some militias.

    It also said academics, journalists, doctors and members of religious and ethnic minorities were increasingly being killed, intimidated or kidnapped by armed groups.

    Iraqi officials say the civilian casualty toll has declined in the capital since the launch of the Baghdad security plan nine weeks ago. U.S. military commanders say a surge in car bombings, however, has pushed up the overall toll countrywide.

    Under the crackdown, U.S. and Iraqi troops are sweeping through Baghdad neighborhoods, setting up checkpoints and combat outposts and walling off some flashpoint areas with concrete barriers.

    But work began to alter a 5-km (3.5 mile) concrete wall around the Sunni enclave of Adhamiya after Maliki ordered a halt to construction at the weekend following sharp public outcry.

    "We have sought other substitutes such as barbed wire, sand walls and small concrete barriers," said Brigadier-General Qassim Moussawi, Iraqi military spokesman for the U.S.-backed security plan in the city.

    Both Bush and Maliki are under pressure to show progress in the crackdown after four years of war that has killed tens of thousands of Iraqis and more than 3,300 U.S. troops.

    The U.S. Congress will vote this week on a funding bill that sets March 31, 2008, as a goal for pulling out most troops but Bush has repeatedly threatened to use his presidential veto.

    -----

    Additional reporting by Ross Colvin.