UN Says over 700 People Killed in Iraq in October
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – The United Nations announced that the number of Iraqis killed in violence in October was 714, up from 537 people in the previous month.
The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq said in a statement that 559 of those killed in October were civilians, including civilian police, while 155 were members of Iraqi security forces, including the Kurdish peshmerga, Interior Ministry SWAT forces and militias fighting alongside the Iraqi army. The figures do not include casualties in Anbar province, which the UN says it could not obtain.
The number of civilians injured in October was 1,067 the statement says as reported by The Associated Press.
Violence has been on the rise in Iraq since June 2014, when the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levenat (ISIL) group took control of parts of Iraq's northern and western regions. The group has been committing heinous crimes and war crimes in Iraq and Syria on a historic scale.
The United Nations has held ISIL responsible for human rights abuses and war crimes, and Amnesty International has reported ethnic cleansing by the group on a "historic scale".
