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Iraq

Iraqi civilians pay deadly price

By wire services
Published March 3, 2006

BAGHDAD - Insurgency-related violence last year killed more than twice as many Iraqi civilians - 4,024 - as Iraqi soldiers and police, according to government figures obtained Thursday by the Associated Press.

The civilian death count in the first two months of this year already stands at more than one-quarter of last year's total - due in part to sectarian violence triggered by the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine and car bombings in Shiite neighborhoods around Baghdad.

The number of civilian deaths - many in Baghdad, where 25 percent of the population lives - has created a climate in which parents are afraid to send their children to school, women huddle inside their homes and husbands send wives and children abroad.

Figures compiled by the Health Ministry put the civilian death toll for 2005 at 4,024. The ministry's civilian death count for the first two months of this year is 1,093.

Death tolls for the police and army are compiled by the ministries of Interior and Defense. Their figures show that 1,695 police and soldiers were killed last year. Most of the victims - 1,222 - were from the ranks of the police. That pattern has continued through January and February of this year - when 155 policemen and 44 soldiers died. The figures cannot be verified independently. In a dangerous country as large as California, journalists rely on figures provided by local police, hospitals and the Interior Ministry.

POLITICAL SHOWDOWN LOOMS: Leaders of Iraq's Kurdish, secular and Sunni Arab parties asked the main Shiite alliance on Thursday to withdraw interim Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari as its candidate for prime minister in the next government.

Many Sunnis blame al-Jaafari for failing to rein in commandos of the Shiite-led Interior Ministry. And Kurds accuse al-Jaafari of dragging his heels on resolving their claims around the oil-rich city of Kirkuk.

The leaders said that if al-Jaafari continues as prime minister, they might try to force his removal by forming a united opposition group larger than the Shiites, in a move that could upend the political process and prolong efforts to form a government.

Al-Jaafari and his radical Shiite backers vowed Thursday to fight the bid to oust him, threatening to plunge the country into political turmoil, delay formation of a new government and undercut U.S. plans to begin withdrawing troops this year.

Al-Jaafari won the nomination by a single vote during an election Feb. 12 among Shiite lawmakers who won seats in the Dec. 15 election. He defeated Vice President Adil Abdul-Mahdi in large part because of the support of radical anti-U.S. cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

POLITICIAN ESCAPES ATTACK: Gunmen attacked the disabled car of Iraq's top Sunni politician Thursday, killing one bodyguard and wounding five after the Sunni leader sped away in another vehicle.

Thirty-eight other people died in a new round of violence.

After the attack, Adnan al-Dulaimi, leader of the largest Sunni parliamentary bloc, refused to assign blame and called for restraint to blunt the spiraling sectarian violence that has taken about 500 lives since Feb. 22, when a Shiite shrine was bombed in Samarra.

"I don't accuse anyone . . . I consider it accidental, and I call on my brothers for self-restraint and to contain what happened because Iraq is bigger than Adnan and his guards," al-Dulaimi told the Associated Press.

The U.S. military reported an American soldier was killed during combat in insurgency-ridden Anbar province Wednesday, raising to 2,296 the number of U.S. servicemembers who have died since the war began, according to an Associated Press count.

Army Capt. Mary McCarthy's client, Army Sgt. Michael Smith, faces as much as 29 1/2 years in prison if convicted of setting his dog loose on prisoners at the prison in Iraq.

Miller has invoked his constitutional right to remain silent. Miller's lawyer, Michelle Crawford, said she has offered both prosecutors and defense lawyers the opportunity to submit questions they want to ask her client, who would then decide whether to respond.

SAUDI DETAINED: Iraqi border guards captured a Saudi, Abdullah Salah al-Harbi, who admitted he was involved in the suicide attack on the Abqaiq oil facility in Saudi Arabia, an Iraqi military spokesman said Thursday. Harbi was detained Tuesday by Iraq border guards in the desert along the border between the two countries, said Saadoun Jabiri, a spokesman for the Iraqi border guard.

Information from the Associated Press and the New York Times was used in this report.

[Last modified March 3, 2006, 02:15:34]