Baghdad : At least 12,282 civilians were killed and 23,126 others injured in 2014, making it the deadliest year in Iraq since 2006-2007 marked by sectarian violence, according to a new UN statement.
“The Iraqi ordinary citizen continues to suffer from violence and terrorism. 2014 has seen the highest number of casualities since the violence in 2006-2007,” the statement quoted Nickolay Mladenov, UN envoy and chief of UN Assistance Mission for Iraq, as saying.
During the last month of 2014 alone, 1,101 Iraqis were killed and 1,868 others injured in terrorist attacks and violence across Iraq, Xinhua reported citing the statement. That toll includes 680 civilians and 421 security personnel.
“Once again, I call on all political actors in Iraq to come together and find peaceful solutions to the problems that face the country,” Mladenov said. “I do hope that 2015 will be a year in which this can be done.”
The security situation in Iraq has drastically deteriorated since June last year when bloody clashes broke out between Iraqi security forces and militants of the Islamic State terrorist group.
The month of June registered the highest number of civilian casualties in 2014, when a total of 1,775 civilians were killed and 2,351 others injured.
The militants took control of the country’s northern city of Mosul and seized swathes of the territories where Iraqi security forces abandoned their posts in Nineveh and other predominantly Sunni provinces.