At least 6000 civilians were killed in Iraq over the last two months as casualties continued an "upward trend", a recently released United Nations report stated.
Data collected by Baghdad morgue and the Health Ministry supported the UN estimates, part of a bi-monthly UN report on human rights in Iraq.
Sectarian killings surged in Iraq since February attack on Al Askari shrine in the Iraqi city of Samara, raising fears of an all-out civil war that could lead to the break-up of Iraq.
Baghdad morgue said it has received 1595 bodies in June, 1375 in May and 1155 in April. Officials said that 80 percent of these are victims of violent attacks that have swept through the country since the formation of the new Iraqi government.
The U.S. President George W. Bush claimed last December that only 30,000 Iraqis had been killed in the war that began on March 20 2003.
Iraqi health officials assert that media reports suggesting that only 50,000 civilians have been killed in the war are underestimating the real toll, according to the UN.
Fresh violence
16 Iraqis, including five civilians, died Wednesday in a new wave of violence that struck the war-torn country.
A blast outside the main courthouse in Kiruk, Iraq's third-largest city with about a million residents and sizable ethnic Kurdish, Arab and Turkmen communities, killed 5 civilians, and wounded twelve others, mostly staff members.
A series of blasts targeting a police patrol in Baghdad killed another five people and wounded 20 others, an interior ministry official said Wednesday.
Three policemen were injured when a car bomb went off as police patrol drove by the technology university in the central Rusafa district.
Two more bombs exploded, killing five people and wounding 17 others.
Sixteen bodies were found in separate areas in Iraq. Officials suggest they’re victims of sectarian violence.
Also in Baghdad, gunmen killed Maj. Gen. Fakhir Abdul-Hussein Ali, legal adviser to the Interior Ministry, while he was on his way to work.
In Mahmoudiya, about 30km south of Baghdad, police said one person was killed and five others were kidnapped.
Fierce fighting broke out Wednesday between Iraqi security forces and rebels in the area between Yusufiya and Mahmoudiya, another part of Iraq that witnessed repetitive sectarian attacks in recent months.
20 Sunnis kidnapped
Unidentified gunmen on Wednesday kidnapped 20 employees of a government agency responsible for Sunni mosques and shrines across Iraq.
The incident was the latest in a series of kidnappings of government employees and officials that has surged in Iraq in recent days.