Accountability and Justice Law passed by Iraqi Parliament on January 12; US launches renewed raids against Sunni insurgents; WHO: Over 150,000 Iraqi deaths till June 2006
  • Share
  • Tweet
  • Email
  • Whatsapp
  • Linkedin
  • Print

    • The Iraqi Parliament, in an important step of national reconciliation, passed the Accountability and Justice Law on January 12. The Bill is designed to allow former members of the Baath Party occupy government offices again, provided they were not involved in crimes against Iraqis during the regime of Saddam Hussein. It had been pending before the Parliament since March 2007 due to opposition from Shiite members. President Bush, on a tour of the region, praised the Iraqi measure as an “an important step toward reconciliation1.” Talking to reporters in Kuwait, he also stated that additional troop withdrawals from Iraq would depend solely on the developing situation there, to be reviewed by General Petraeus in March/April.

    The American military meanwhile launched air raids supported by assault troops against suspected insurgent targets in the Latifiya district (south of Baghdad), along with continuing operations in Diyala province (north of Baghdad) and in Salahuddin province (northwest of Baghdad). Reports noted that these attacks targeted Sunni insurgents who had shifted their operations away from Baghdad due to the ‘troop surge’2. These insurgents had renewed their attacks against the local tribal leaders aligned with the US-backed Awakening Councils, killing two of them during the week3. The US military on its part lost 16 soldiers during the first 2 weeks of the year due to these operations.

    The WHO meanwhile in a new study has estimated that over 150,000 Iraqis had died since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 till the middle of 2006. The Iraq Body Count, a nongovernmental group based in Britain had put the number of civilians dead at 47,668 while another study by Johns Hopkins University had estimated that about 600,000 were killed in the same period4.

    Top