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Iraqi Deaths Up in October in Blow to US "Surge" Policy
Agence France-Presse
Friday 02 November 2007
Baghdad - The number of Iraqis killed in insurgent and sectarian attacks rose
in October, according to government figures obtained on Thursday, in a blow
to a nine-month-old US troop surge policy.
At least 887 Iraqis were killed last month, compared to 840 in September, according
to the data compiled by the interior, defence and health ministries.
As in previous months, the dead were overwhelmingly civilians, with 758 reported
killed against 116 policemen and 13 soldiers.
The October death toll remained sharply down on the August figure of 1,770
but the increase on September dented boasts from both US and Iraqi leaders that
the crackdown on insurgent and militia violence was leading to a significant
fall in casualties.
Again on Thursday, Iraq's minister for security, Shirwan al-Waili, insisted
that the situation was improving in Baghdad and other areas.
"Because of the security plan, the violence has reduced. Baghdad is much
safer," Waili told state television.
And just last week, the Iraqi army commander for the Baghdad region, General
Abud Qanbar, hailed what he said was mounting evidence of the success of Operation
Fardh al-Qanoon (Imposing Law) launched in the capital and surrounding regions
in February.
The operation has seen the deployment of 28,500 additional US troops ordered
to Iraq as part of the "surge" policy of President George W. Bush.
"The level of the terrorist operations has reduced, and life has come
to normality in many parts in Baghdad," Qanbar told reporters on October
24.
US second-in-command Lieutenant General Ray Odierno told the same news conference
there was a "downward trend" in attacks.
"Improvised explosive device attacks, the extremists' preferred method
of terror, have also been reduced, down well over 60 percent in the past four
months, with notably reduced lethality," he said.
Iraqi casualties soared after a February 2006 attack on a revered Shiite shrine
claimed by Al-Qaeda sparked an explosion of sectarian violence.
The bombing at the Al-Askari shrine in the central city of Samarra saw a sharp
rise in monthly death tolls, peaking in January this year with 1,992 deaths
reported by the three Iraqi ministries.
The ministry statistics are difficult to track as officals get reports of many
attacks days later.
As recently as Sunday, preliminary figures floated by the three ministries
had suggested the October death toll would total just 285.
The prime minister's office which used to release the data officially stopped
doing so as the figures were widely disputed.
The United Nations, which used to review the statistics, has not been able
to do so since earlier this year.
British website Iraqbodycount.net, which tracks Iraqi casualty figures, said
2007 could yet end up being the second deadliest year since the March 2003 invasion,
after last year which saw 27,000 civilian deaths.
In new violence on Thursday, 16 Iraqis were killed, five of them in the capital,
and 11 in the confessional mixed province of Diyala to its north.
The dead in Diyala, most of them security personnel, came after a suicide bombing
against the province's police headquarters in the city of Baquba on Monday killed
28 policemen.
The five dead in the capital were would-be recruits to the Iraqi army from
the Sunni district of Adhamiyah who had gathered at a recruitment centre in
the nearby Al-Binouk neighbourhood, security officials said.
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