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Iraqi official puts civilian death toll at 12,000

By wire services
Published June 3, 2005

BAGHDAD - Insurgent violence has claimed the lives of 12,000 Iraqis in the past 18 months, Interior Minister Bayan Jabr said Thursday, putting the first official count on the largest category of victims from bombings, ambushes and other increasingly deadly attacks.

Insurgents killed 38 people in a series of rapid-fire attacks Thursday, including three suicide car bombings within an hour and a driveby shooting at a busy Baghdad market that ratcheted up the bloody campaign to undermine Iraq's government.

Jabr also said the government offensive seeking to root out rebels in Baghdad had scored big gains, saying this week's sweep by Iraqi soldiers and police captured 700 insurgents and killed 28.

Iraqi and U.S. forces have stepped up operations to answer an insurgent onslaught that has killed at least 814 people since Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari announced his Cabinet five weeks ago, but militants staged deadly attacks across a swath of northern Iraq.

In Tuz Khormato, a popular highway stop 55 miles south of the oil-rich town of Kirkuk, a suicide car bomber targeted bodyguards for Iraq's Kurdish deputy prime minister as they ate at a restaurant. The blast killed 12 people.

In Kirkuk, a suicide car bomber trying to attack a convoy of civilian contract workers killed four Iraqi bystanders and wounded 11 people. Another suicide bomber killed four people and wounded four in Baqubah, about 35 miles northeast of Baghdad. Hours later, two parked motorcycles rigged with bombs blew up near a coffee shop there, killing five Iraqis and wounding 13.

In the capital, men in three cars sprayed gunfire into a crowded market in the Hurriyah neighborhood, killing nine people, the interior and defense ministries said. Two other attacks in the Baghdad area killed four and injured three.

Also Thursday, the U.S. military said two American soldiers were killed in combat near Ramadi and another died of nonbattle injuries in Kirkuk on Wednesday. At least 1,667 U.S. military members have died since the war began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

ABU GHRAIB PICTURES: A judge in New York has ordered the government to release four videos from Abu Ghraib prison and dozens of photographs from the same collection as photos that touched off the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal a year ago.

U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein issued the order late Wednesday requiring the Army to release the material to the American Civil Liberties Union to comply with the Freedom of Information Act. He gave the Army one month to release them. The ACLU said the material will show that the abuse was "more than the actions of a few rogue soldiers."

WMD REPORT: U.N. satellite imagery experts have determined that material that could be used to make biological or chemical weapons and banned long-range missiles has been removed from 109 sites in Iraq, U.N. weapons inspectors said in a report obtained Thursday. In the report to the Security Council, acting chief weapons inspector Demetrius Perricos said he has reached no conclusions about who removed the items or where they went.

--Information from the Washington Post and Associated Press was used in this report.

[Last modified June 3, 2005, 01:17:39]