Hmm...Iraqi civilian casualties going down..

Iraqi Civilian Casualties Declined in June, Officials Say By ALISSA J. RUBIN New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/02/world/middleeast/02iraq.html?_r=1&ref=world&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin BAGHDAD, Monday, July 2 — American and Iraqi officials said Sunday that they saw a decline in the monthly civilian casualty count in June, a development that occurred as the American troop increase reached full strength. However, the size of the decline was hard to gauge because death counts in Iraq are highly inaccurate. Some bombing victims’ bodies are never recovered, families often collect their dead before they can be counted by officials, and the dead bodies found around Baghdad, while generally taken to the city morgue, are sometimes taken to hospitals where they may not be counted. An American military spokesman, Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, said there had been only “a slight decrease in the month of June.” He added that it was “a potential downward trend” and that the military would be closely watching the numbers in the coming weeks. The Americans do not make specific figures public. He added that American and Iraqi troops were just two weeks into a major operation against Sunni insurgents in the belts around Baghdad. “We can’t tell yet the effect we’re having,” he said. “But reducing deaths in the civilian population is why we’re doing what we’re doing.” Iraqi officials estimated that civilian deaths nationwide had dropped 36 percent in June, down to about 1,200. Civilian casualties in May had topped 1,900, they said. The Web site icasualties.org, which tabulates news reports of civilian deaths, put the number of deaths in June at about 1,342, down from 1,980 in May. In Baghdad, 730 civilians were reported killed in June from assassinations, bombs or small-arms fire. That was down from 1,070 in May, a decline of almost 32 percent, an Interior Ministry official told The New York Times. However, the number of dead bodies found in Baghdad, a measure of sectarian killings, while lower in June than in May, was still higher than in April, according to the Interior Ministry official. In April, there were 411 dead bodies found in Baghdad; in May, there were 726; in June, the number dropped to 540. Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s government no longer reports civilian mortality statistics and has refused to provide figures to the United Nations. Some officials, however, sometimes make reports available to the news media on a not-for-attribution basis. The influx of American soldiers in the capital has been accompanied by increased raids on insurgent groups and, recently, by a broader offensive in the belts around Baghdad in order to curb the car- and roadside-bomb factories widely believed to supply many of the weapons used by insurgents in the capital. On June 23, American troops in Mosul found one of the largest bomb factories uncovered to date: an elaborate complex spread over three buildings — one used to manufacture car bombs, one to make roadside bombs and one to manufacture homemade explosives. The raid found several vehicles, including a truck, being prepared for use as car bombs. A number of other factories have been found closer to Baghdad.