More than 1,000 killed in 17 days in Iraq: UN

This article is more than 12 months old

Jun 24, 2014 08:52 pm

More than 1,000 people — at least three-quarters of them civilians — were killed this month as Islamist militants swept through large swathes of northern and western Iraq, the United Nations said on Tuesday.

The casualties happened from June 5 to June 22.

Mr Rupert Colville, a spokesman for the UN human rights office told reporters in Geneva, said the numbers “should be viewed very much as a minimum”.

A number of the deaths were due to “verified summary executions and extra-judicial killings of civilians, police, and soldiers who were hors combat (outside the fight)”.

At least 318 more people — not necessarily all civilians — had been killed and 590 injured in Baghdad and areas in the south, “many of them as a result of at least six separate vehicle-borne bombs,” he said.

Militants, led by jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, have since early this month overrun major areas of five provinces and driven to within less than 100km of Baghdad.