July deadliest month for Iraqis in 2 years

Family members grieve as they ride with a coffin
for a victim killed in violence before burial in Najaf, Iraq, Sunday,
Aug. 1, 2010. (AP / Alaa al-Marjani)


BAGHDAD — July was Iraq's deadliest month in more
than two years, according to new official figures, suggesting that a
resilient insurgency is successfully taking advantage of a months long
deadlock in forming a new government.

The figures released late Saturday show that 535 people were killed
last month, the highest since May 2008 when 563 were killed, heightening
concerns over Iraq's precarious security situation even as the U.S.
troops are reducing their numbers.

Iraq has been mired in a political deadlock for nearly five months
since a March parliamentary election failed to produce a clear winner.

The political impasse further deepened this weekend, when a Shiite
bloc nominally allied with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's coalition
publicly announced its rejection of his candidacy for a second,
four-year term in office.

In an announcement read by senior Shiite politician Ahmad Chalabi on
Saturday, the Iraqi National Alliance said it was also suspending
contacts with al-Maliki's State of Law bloc until it puts forward
another candidate for the prime minister's job. He said the merger
between the two blocs, which leaves them just a few seats shy of a
majority, however, remained intact.

Opposition within the alliance to al-Maliki has long been known, but the announcement was significant for its emphatic tone.

With the holy month of Ramadan scheduled to start in the second week
of August, there seems to be little hope of a political breakthrough
before at least mid-September.

The pace of life slows down considerably in Ramadan, when devout
Muslims refrain from food, water, sex and smoking from dawn-to-dusk.
This year's fast is expected to be especially challenging in view of
Iraq's unforgiving summer heat.

The monthly toll was compiled by the defence, interior and health
ministries also showed 1,043 people were wounded last month. Of those
killed, the ministries identified 396 as civilians, 89 as policemen and
50 as soldiers.

Bombings and mortar attacks targeting Shiites on two religious
pilgrimages last month, a bombing against anti-al-Qaida Sunni militiamen
south of Baghdad and another that hit a Shiite mosque north of the
capital killed at least 160 people and boosted the July death toll
significantly.

Bombings, assassinations and gunfights remain daily occurrences in
Iraq, particularly in the capital, although the overall level of
violence has dramatically declined since 2008. However, concerted
attacks on Shiite civilians blamed on al-Qaida militants are thought to
be designed to re-ignite the sectarian strife that pushed the country to
the brink of all-out civil war in 2006 and 2007.

Civilians also accounted for the overwhelming majority of the wounded
in July -- 680 of the 1,043. There were also 165 soldiers and 198
policemen among the wounded, according to the ministries.

The figures also showed that Iraqi security forces, which continue to
be supported by the U.S. military in high profile operations, killed
100 insurgents and detained 955 suspected militants.

The high casualty figures point to the resilience of the insurgency
seven years after it began in 2003, despite the death and capture of
thousands of its fighters by U.S. and Iraqi forces.

With U.S. forces out of Iraqi cities since June last year, the
insurgents seem to be focusing their attacks on Iraqi security forces
and Shiite civilians.

On Thursday, al-Qaida militants killed 16 members of Iraq's security
forces in a brazen, daylight attack at the northern Baghdad
neighbourhood of Azamiyah in what was seen as an impressive show of
force by the terror network.

All but 50,000 American troops are scheduled to be out of Iraq by the
end of this month as the U.S. military shifts its mission from warfare
to training Iraqi security forces. The U.S. military said late last
month that troop levels in Iraq had dropped to below 65,000.

Casualty figures for U.S. forces have mostly been in single digits in
recent months, a fact that points to the diminishing visibility of the
U.S. military on the ground when Iraqi security forces seem to be
struggling against the insurgency and Washington determined to stick to
its withdrawal timetable.

According to an Associated Press count, four U.S. troops were killed in July, only one of them in combat.