Crisis worse than civil war: Annan: 30 killed in Iraq violence
BAGHDAD, Dec 3: At least 30 Iraqis were killed on Sunday, a day after a deadly bomb attack in Baghdad, as outgoing UN chief Kofi Annan said the bloodshed in the Iraq was worse than a civil war.
Annan's remark came a few hours after President Jalal Talabani became the second Iraqi leader, after powerful Shia politician Abdel Aziz al-Hakim, to reject the UN chief's call for a world peace conference on Iraq.
Insurgents were back at work on Sunday, when one wearing an explosive belt blew himself up next to a police station near the northern oil city of Kirkuk, killing three officers, Major General Torhan Yussef said.
Farther south, at least 16 people were murdered in and around the restive town of Baquba, according to sources.
And Shia imam Taha Yassin, close to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, was shot dead. Elsewhere 10 people were killed.
The US military reported the deaths of three more troops and confirmed that a pilot whose fighter plane crashed last week in north-western Iraq was killed.
The fatalities took the military's losses since the March 2003 invasion to 2,888, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.
On Sunday shell-shocked Iraqis were also mourning the 60 victims from Saturday's triple car bombing when blasts tore through a crowded shopping street at nightfall.
On Sunday American soldiers killed six suspected insurgents, two women and a child when they called in an air strike to dislodge gunmen from a house west of Baghdad late on Saturday, the military said.
As the carnage continued Annan called the sectarian bloodshed worse than civil war.
In an interview with the BBC, Annan said: “When we had the strife in Lebanon and other places, we called that a civil war-- this is much worse.”—AFP
