Iraq Civilian Deaths Mount as Violence Rages

by Jay Deshmukh
Fri Dec 1, 2:13 PM ET

BAGHDAD (AFP) - At least 1,847 Iraqis were slaughtered last month, officials said as embattled 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 on Friday, 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 percent on 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 3,709.

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.

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