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U.N.: Iraqi deaths hit record
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More troops for NATO
WASHINGTON - After weeks of prodding, European nations have agreed to provide more troops for NATO operations in Afghanistan, where Taliban violence has surged, the alliance's top commander said.
U.S. Gen. James Jones said Wednesday that Romania has agreed to send a battalion in October, and Britain and Canada are adding to their forces. Poland had previously said it would send a battalion and some special operations forces.
Those agreements, Jones said, would nearly meet the request for 2,500 addition troops he made earlier this month. There are currently about 20,000 NATO troops and 21,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
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UNITED NATIONS — - The number of Iraqi civilians killed in July and August hit 6,599, a record-high number that is far greater than initial estimates suggested, the United Nations said.
The report from the U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq's Human Rights office highlighted the sectarian crisis gripping the country, offering a grim assessment across a range of indicators - worrying evidence of torture, unlawful detentions, growth of sectarian militias and death squads, and a rise in "honor killings" of women.
That raises new questions about U.S. and Iraqi forces' ability to bring peace to Baghdad, where the bulk of the violent deaths occurred. Iraq's government, set up in earlier this year, is "currently facing a generalized breakdown of law and order which presents a serious challenge to the institutions of Iraq," it said.
According to the U.N., which releases the figures every two months, violent civilian deaths in July reached an unprecedented high of 3,590, an average of more than 100 a day. The August toll was 3,009, the report said.
The lower August number may have been the result of a security crackdown in Baghdad, though it was partly offset by a rise in attacks elsewhere, including in the northern city of Mosul.
For the previous period, the U.N. had reported just under 6,000 deaths - 2,669 in May and 3,149 in June. That was up from 1,129 in April, and 710 in January.
Of the total for July and August, Wednesday's report said 5,106 of the dead were from Baghdad.
The report attributed many of the deaths to the rising sectarian tensions that have pushed Iraq toward the verge of civil war.
"These figures reflect the fact that indiscriminate killings of civilians have continued throughout the country while hundreds of bodies appear bearing signs of severe torture and execution style killing," the report said. "Such murders are carried out by death squads or by armed groups, with sectarian or revenge connotations."
At the heart of the U.N. findings are casualty figures that combine two counts: from the Ministry of Health, which records deaths reported by hospitals; and the Medico-Legal Institute in Baghdad, which tallies the unidentified bodies it receives.
The U.N. investigators who compiled the report said it was likely that even those numbers were low.
The U.S. military had initially claimed a drastic drop in the death toll for August, but the estimate was revised upward after the United States revealed it had not counted people killed by bombs, mortars, rockets or other mass attacks.
The U.N. report said torture was a major concern in Iraq and the bodies showed significant evidence of it.
On other issues, the report painted a similarly grim picture. It said about 300,000 people had been displaced in Iraq since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February, and reported a rise in honor killings against women.
The report said more than 35,000 Iraqis were under detention, including 13,571 by multinational forces. That represents a 28 percent increase over the number at the end of June, it said.
In other developments:
Italy formally handed over security responsibility for the southern Dhi Qar province to Iraqi forces today.
In scattered violence, at least 15 people were killed, including six policemen whose western Baghdad station was hit with mortar and gunfire.
More mutilated bodies were found, the apparent victims of death squads.
The U.S. command said one American soldier was killed when a bomb exploded next to his vehicle in the north of Baghdad Wednesday.
Armed assailants robbed the Rafidain Bank in Baghdad, seizing an undetermined amount of cash and wounding the bank manager, Khayyoun said. Witnesses said the men were dressed as Iraqi soldiers.
A joint American-Iraqi patrol clashed with forces loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad, in a raid to arrest a Mahdi Army leader, police said.
One day after the judge in Saddam Hussein's genocide trial was fired over accusations that he was biased in favor of the former dictator, the judge who replaced him threw Saddam out of the courtroom and declared, "I decide whether I want to listen to you!"
