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Post by atessalev on Jan 16, 2007 23:55:50 GMT -5
January 17, 2007 - 10:14AM
Bombers killed 70 people, many of them young women students, at a Baghdad university on Tuesday, one of the city's bloodiest days in weeks.
In all, at least 105 died in bombings and a shooting in the capital on a day when the United Nations said more than 34,000 Iraqi civilians died in violence last year. Four US soldiers were killed in a bomb attack in northern Iraq.
The Shiite Prime Minister blamed the latest bloodshed in Baghdad on followers of Saddam Hussein. His fellow Sunni Arabs are angry at the botched execution of two aides on Monday, two weeks after the ousted leader was himself hanged to sectarian taunts from official observers, captured on an illicit video.
A car bomb tore through students gathered outside the Mustansiriya University in central Baghdad, most of them women waiting for vehicles to take them home. A suicide bomber then walked into a crowd at a rear entrance, killing more.
"The followers of the ousted regime have been dealt a blow and their dreams buried forever," Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said in a statement. "So Saddamists and terrorists now target the world of knowledge and committed this act today against the innocent students of Mustansiriya University."
[...]
94 deaths a day
The United Nations, in its latest two-monthly human rights report on Iraq, said data from hospitals and morgues put the total civilian death toll for 2006 at 34,452 - 94 each day.
Comparable figures for previous years were not available but officials agree sectarian bloodshed has surged in the past year.
"Without significant progress on the rule of law, sectarian violence will continue indefinitely and eventually spiral out of control," the U.N. human rights chief in Iraq, Gianni Magazzeni, told a news conference, chiding Iraqi leaders for not stopping militia killers operating with and within their security forces.
Of the 6376 civilians killed in the last two months of 2006 - 3462 in November and 2914 in December compared with a high of 3702 in October - three out of four were killed in Baghdad. Most of those were shot, not killed by bombs. Police said they retrieved 25 such death squad victims on Tuesday alone.
Maliki's government, which branded the last UN report as grossly exaggerated, has since banned its officials from giving casualty figures and the United States, which has run Iraq for four years, declined to vouch for the UN data.
"Unfortunately it is a war," White House spokesman Tony Snow said. "The actual number, whatever it is, is too high."
www.theage.com.au/news/world/bombers-slaughter-baghdad-students/2007/01/17/1168709792301.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
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