Iraq casualties rise again

Violent civilian deaths in Iraq rose 36 per cent in February from the previous month after a series of large-scale bombings blamed on Al-Qaeda, Iraqi government figures showed yesterday.

A total of 633 civilians died violently in February, compared with 466 in January, according to figures released by Iraq's interior, defence and health ministries. It was the first increase after six consecutive months of falling casualty tolls.

Despite its sharp rise, the February 2008 figure was still dramatically lower than the 1,645 civilians who died violently in the same month a year ago. A total of 701 civilians were wounded, compared with 2,700 a year ago.

Declining civilian casualties have been hailed by Iraqi and US military officials as proof that new counter-insurgency tactics adopted last year have been working and Iraq is safer.

February's casualty figures spiked after female bombers killed 99 people at two pet markets in Baghdad on February 2 and a suicide bomber killed 63 people returning from a Shi'ite religious ritual south of Baghdad on February 24.

Both attacks were blamed on Al-Qaeda, which US commanders say has been resorted to new tactics, particularly the increased use of women in suicide attacks.

US military officials said the suspected leader of a group that planned suicide bomb attacks had been detained in an operation on Friday near Khan Bani Saad, north of Baghdad. They said he was suspected of trying to recruit women, including his wife, to carry out bombings.

Officials say attacks across Iraq have fallen 60 per cent since last June, when an extra 30,000 US troops became fully deployed as part of the new counter-insurgency strategy, which included moving troops out of large bases and into smaller combat outposts.

However US commanders say Al-Qaeda and other insurgents remain dangerous enemies especially in Iraq's north where they have regrouped after crackdowns on former strongholds in western Anbar province and around Baghdad last year.

In northern Mosul, police were searching for Paulos Faraj Rahho, the Chaldean Catholic archbishop snatched at gunpoint after he left a church on Friday. His driver and two guards were killed in the attack.

Police and representatives of the Chaldean church, a branch of the Roman Catholic Church which practises an ancient Eastern rite, said nothing had been heard about Rahho's fate.

Christians make up about three per cent of Iraq's 27 million mainly Muslim population and have been targeted several times in recent years. A Catholic priest and three assistants were killed in ethnically, and religiously-mixed Mosul last June.

"The situation for Christians is like that for other people in Iraq. We live in the same society and we are sharing the same suffering," Andraws Abuna, an assistant to the Chaldean patriarch of Baghdad, told Reuters.