Iraq bloodshed hits record levels*

by Jay Deshmukh in Baghdad

December 02, 2006 04:10am
Article from: Agence France-Presse

AT least 1847 Iraqis were slaughtered last month, officials said
overnight as premier Nuri al-Maliki vowed that local forces could take
over the battered nation's security in June 2007.

The unabated violence left at least 27 people dead overnight, including
14 Kurdish farmers from the town of Sinjar near the Syrian border who
were found massacred in a field.

The November casualty figures, released by Iraq's interior and defence
ministries, showed civilian deaths up 43 per cent in October as the
brutal sectarian conflict and the anti-US insurgency showed no signs of
letting up.

The government figures are roughly half of those presented by the United
Nations in its monthly reports - last week the UN said the death toll in
October had reached a new high of 3709.

But whichever set of figures is the most accurate, both show a clear
upward trend in civilian casualties as Shiite militias and Sunni
extremists continue to kill thousands of people across Iraq, mostly in
Baghdad.

The security ministries said that the number of insurgents killed had
also more than doubled over the same period, with 423 rebels killed in
November compared with 194 the month before.

The latest figures came as Baghdad echoed to the sound of machine gun
fire for most of yesterday as insurgents clashed with Iraqi troops in
the Fadhel neighbourhood.

The battle left one Iraqi soldier dead and nine people wounded,
including four soldiers, security officials said. US attack helicopters
circled the site of the fighting.

Iraqi state television described the clashes as an operation against
"terrorist hideouts" in the central Baghdad district.

The rising casualties challenged an optimistic Mr Maliki who on Thursday
said his forces could take over the security of Iraq by June 2007.

"I can say that Iraqi forces will be ready, fully ready to receive this
command and to command its own forces, and I can tell you that by next
June our forces will be ready," Mr Maliki told the US television network
ABC.

He spoke a few hours after his meeting with US President George W. Bush
in Jordan where the two leaders discussed Iraq's ability to secure the
country on its own, and whether it could curb the current sectarian
bloodshed.

Upon his return to Baghdad from Amman, Mr Maliki told reporters that he
had won an agreement from Bush that he will take control of Iraq's
security forces more quickly than planned, to allow him to fight the
insurgency in his own way.

Currently most of the fledgling Iraqi army comes under the day-to-day
control of a US-led coalition, which also has 150,000 American troops.

Mr Bush is also meeting powerful Iraqi Shiite leader Abdel Aziz al-Hakim
in Washington next week in a bid to persuade him to help dismantle the
militias who are accused of killing Sunni Arabs.

The meeting comes after Hakim overnight said that Iraq's sectarian
conflict could "burn everyone" and threaten the security of the entire
region.

Calling for Iraqi unity in Jordan's largest mosque of King Hussein,
Hakim said: "We do not want a Shiite government that sidelines the
Sunnis and we don't want a Sunni government that marginalises the Shiites."

Meanwhile Italy pulled its remaining troops from the southern province
of Dhi Qar where they were deployed since 2003 as part of US-led
coalition forces.

Earlier this year the Italian troops had handed over the province's
security to Iraqi forces.

On Monday Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi said the remaining 70
troops of the original 3,000 would return home in the first few days of
December.

Italy's centre-left parties, backing Mr Prodi's government which
replaced the conservative administration of Silvio Berlusconi after
April elections, made withdrawal from Iraq one of the centrepieces of
their election campaign.

Mr Berlusconi was one of Bush's key allies in Europe, and at least 31
Italian soldiers have been killed in Iraq since 2003.

The troops were stationed in Nasiriyah, the provincial seat of Dhi Qar,
a relatively peaceful region compared with areas further north where US
forces are battling a raging insurgency and the brutal sectarian conflict.

Yesterday, 27 people were killed in Iraq, including 14 Kurdish farmers
murdered in a field in Sinjar, some 50 kilometres from the Syrian border.

The farmers were shot dead and their bodies were found by their
relatives, said Sinjar administrator Dakheel Karim.

Sinjar is a key centre of the Yazidi people, an ethnically Kurdish
religious minority that Sunni extremists accuse of devil worship.

The US military also announced the deaths of two more soldiers in
Baghdad, taking its losses since the war to 2883.