UN accuses Iraq of covering up rise in civilian deaths

[Jcrowley]

UN accuses Iraq of covering up rise in civilian deaths


· Maliki office calls report on sectarian toll inaccurate
· UK denied transit visa to co-author of Lancet study

Julian Borger, diplomatic editor
Thursday April 26, 2007
The Guardian

The UN yesterday accused the Iraqi government of trying to cover up a rise in civilian casualties from sectarian violence since the troop surge ordered by George Bush earlier this year.

Iraq's government had withheld civilian casualty statistics because it feared the data would be used to depict a "very grim" security situation, claimed the UN officials in Baghdad.

Amid growing political sensitivity to death toll figures, it also emerged yesterday that Canadian scientists had complained that the British government last week denied a transit visa to an Iraqi colleague, Riyadh Lafta, an epidemiologist and co-author of a Lancet report that had estimated the Iraqi war dead at more than 650,000. The Foreign Office said yesterday that it was investigating his case.

The availability of official numbers of the civilian dead and wounded seems to have declined since President Bush gambled with an increase in troops in Iraq - a last-ditch effort to turn the tide on the insurgency and sectarian bloodshed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2065633,00.html