Iraq disputes U.N. report on civilian casualties

BAGHDAD -- The Iraqi government has refused to provide the United Nations with civilian casualty figures for its latest report on the hardships facing Iraqis, the world body said Wednesday, but numbers from various ministries indicate more than 5,500 people died in the Baghdad area alone in the first three months of 2007.

The numbers, provided to the Los Angeles Times by employees in government ministries who insisted on anonymity, could not be verified.

At a news conference to unveil the U.N.'s 10th report on the human-rights situation in Iraq since August 2005, the spokesman for the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq, Said Arikat, said the government had given no "official" reason for not issuing casualty figures.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's government rejected the report for its criticisms of the country's judicial system, saying it "lacks accuracy" and balance. Among other things, the United Nations said some prisoners in Iraqi detention facilities faced torture, were forced into confessing to alleged crimes and were denied adequate access to lawyers.

U.S. Embassy officials also faulted the findings, saying the criticism of the legal system, in particular, contained inaccuracies. U.S. officials also defended al-Maliki's decision to withhold casualty figures. "There were sometimes concerns with political motivations" in the release of data, one U.S. Embassy official said.

Criticisms of the U.N. findings come amid growing impatience with a U.S.-Iraqi security program that has failed to quell violence, despite thousands of additional troops in Baghdad and neighboring provinces.

Nine Iraqi soldiers were killed today and 15 people were wounded when a suicide bomber rammed his car into an Iraqi army checkpoint in Khalis, 50 miles north of Baghdad, police said. On Wednesday, a suicide bomber struck a police station northeast of Baghdad, killing four officers. Explosions, shootings and mortar attacks killed at least 41 people elsewhere in Iraq.

The U.S. military said a U.S. soldier died Tuesday in a noncombat incident. No further details were released. At least 3,334 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the war, according to an Associated Press count.

Arikat said it was too early to judge the success of the security plan, but he made it clear violence remained out of control. "There's insurgent violence, there's criminal violence, there's military violence, there's all kinds of honor killings and so on," he said. "Violence has many tentacles. It's like an octopus."

In its previous report, in January, the United Nations said 34,452 civilians had died in violence last year, based on information from government ministries, hospitals and medical officials. The Iraqi government put the toll at 12,357. The numbers obtained by the Los Angeles Times indicated civilian deaths numbered 1,991 in January, dropped to 1,646 in February, when the security plan began, and rose to 1,872 in March.

The trend was similar to that suggested by www.icasualties.org, which monitors civilian and military deaths in Iraq and bases its count on news reports. It estimates 4,766 civilians died from January through March: 1,711 in January, 1,381 in February and 1,674 in March.

Reports on Wednesday's violence were provided by The Associated Press; material from Reuters was also included in this report.