Hundreds more Iraqis died in violence in July and August than in the previous two months, many of them tortured to death because of their religion with cables, acid and power drills, a U.N. report said on Wednesday.
The July total of 3,590 deaths was unprecedented, it said, while the August figure of 3,009, though lower, was also among the worst yet.
In its previous report two months ago, it gave a combined figure of 5,818 for the two months of May and June. The latest two-month figure shows an increase of more than 13 percent over that number, which it described as a sharp surge at the time.
“Hundreds of bodies have continued to appear throughout the country bearing signs of severe torture and execution-style killing,” it said in a statement announcing its latest report.
“Terrorist attacks, the growth of militias, the emergence of organized crime reflects a lack of centralized and authorized control over the use of force in the country, which results in indiscriminate killings of civilians,” it said.
Sunnis and Shiites were kidnapped by rival militia and tortured for information about their sect, it said.
“Detainees’ bodies show signs of beating using electrical cables, wounds in different parts of their bodies, including in the head and genitals, broken bones of legs and hands, electric and cigarette burns,” it said.
“Bodies found at the Medico-legal Institute often bear signs of severe torture including acid-induced injuries and burns caused by chemical substances, missing skin, broken bones, missing eyes, missing teeth and wounds caused by power drills or nails.”
Numbers game
Finding reliable data about deaths in Iraq is difficult. The United Nations obtains its figure from morgues and the Iraqi Health Ministry. Morgues no longer provide independent information to the media.
The U.N. report gave no breakdown for the kind of attacks that led to the deaths.
The U.S. military has said its own figure for the “murder rate” in Baghdad halved in August, but Washington has not explained how it arrived at the figure, which it says does not include deaths in bombings and mass attacks.
Violence in Iraq worsened sharply this year after an attack on a Shiite shrine in February triggered tit-for-tat sectarian killings.
Washington says a decrease in killings in August was a result of a crackdown it launched in scattered neighborhoods in Baghdad, part of a new strategy unveiled in July to focus the effort of its 147,000-strong force on the capital.
Even higher death tolls?
So far, the figures for September look likely to rise.
Last week saw a surge in the number of bodies of tortured and bound victims found dumped on the streets of Baghdad. U.S. commanders acknowledge that the overall level of violence in the city has risen even if it has fallen in areas they target.
The past four days have seen a number of large-scale bombings that killed scores in cities in the northern and western sectors where U.S. troops have been drawn down to reinforce the capital.
And U.S. commanders say they expect a surge in violence with the start of the Ramadan holiday next week.