Violence, armed conflicts leave 824 Iraqi casualties in May: UNAMI
Baghdad explosion.
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) Violence and armed conflicts left 824 Iraqis dead and wounded during the month of May, according to a monthly count released Thursday by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Iraq.
“A total of 354 Iraqi civilians were killed and another 470 injured in acts of terrorism, violence and armed conflict in Iraq in May 2017,” said UNAMI in its report.
The organization noted that the statistics does not include security personnel.
The report said that out of those, 160 civilians were killed and 52 were injured in Nineveh where Iraqi forces are engaged in a decisive, seven-month-old battle to eliminate Islamic State militants from Mosul, their largest stronghold in the country.
It counted 86 killed and 226 injured in the capital, Baghdad.
“According to information obtained by UNAMI from the Health Directorate in Anbar, the Governorate suffered a total of 136 civilian casualties (47 killed and 89 injured),” said UNAMI.
Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG) for Iraq, Mr. Ján Kubiš, decried the terrorists’ continued targeting of civilians, before and in the early days of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
“The terrorist Daesh is in its death throes in Mosul, but it has continued to stretch its wicked arm there and in other areas to relieve the military pressure on it, deliberately aiming to kill and maim the maximum number of civilians. Daesh has attacked with explosives a busy ice cream shop in Baghdad where families gathered at night after Iftar. The terrorists also hit on a street outside a government pension office in the capital, and struck as far as the city of Basra in the south.”