Violence killed over 16,000 Iraqi civilians in 2016: Research group

A research group says violence left 16,361 civilians dead last year in Iraq, which has been hit by a campaign of death and destruction perpetrated by Takfiri Daesh terrorists over the past few years.

In a report released on Thursday, the London-based Iraqi Body Count said that an average of more than 1,300 civilians lost their lives due to violence in the Arab country every month.

It further said that the worst affected areas were the northern province of Nineveh and the capital city of Baghdad, with 7,431 and 3,714 Iraqi civilians killed, respectively.

The most deadly bomb attack took place at a very crowded market in Baghdad’s Karrada neighborhood on July 3, 2016. Daesh claimed responsibility for the incident, which killed 324 people, including women and children.

The second fatal bomb blast also struck at a petrol station and restaurant in the Shomali village in the suburbs of the city of al-Hilla on November 24, 2016. It targeted buses carrying Shia pilgrims returning from Arba’een mourning rituals in the holy city of Karbala. The explosion, which was claimed by Daesh, killed up to 100 civilians, among them nationals from Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Over the past months, Iraq has been rocked by a wave of terrorist bomb attacks.

SS