BAGHDAD / Aswat al-Iraq: A total of 4471 civilians died in Iraq's festering "low-level war" with insurgents in 2012, the first annual climb in the death toll in three years, campaigners said on Wednesday.

 

The deaths, up from 4059 in 2011, showed militant fighters were still bent on carrying out large-scale bomb attacks, said rights group Iraq Body Count (IBC) in its annual report.

 

It warned in its annual report that "the country remains in a state of low-level war ...
with a 'background' level of everyday armed violence punctuated by occasional larger-scale attacks designed to kill many people at once."

 

"2012 has been more consistent with an entrenched conflict than with any transformation in the security situation for Iraqis in the first year since the formal withdrawal of US troops," it said.

 

SH (TP)/SR