BAGHDAD, Iraq – A stunning new death count emerged Thursday, as Iraq’s health minister estimated 150,000 civilians have been killed in the war – about three times previously accepted estimates.
Moderate Sunni Muslims, meanwhile, threatened to walk away from politics and pick up guns, while the Shiite-dominated government renewed pressure on the United States to unleash the Iraqi army and claimed it could crush violence in six months.
After Democrats swept to majorities in both houses of the U.S. Congress and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld resigned, Iraqis appeared unsettled and seemed to sense the potential for an even bloodier conflict because future American policy is uncertain. As a result, positions hardened on both sides of the country’s deepening sectarian divide.
Previous estimates of Iraq deaths held that 45,000-50,000 have been killed in the nearly 44-month-old conflict, according to partial figures from Iraqi institutions and media reports. No official count has ever been available.
Health Minister Ali al-Shemari gave his new estimate of 150,000 to reporters during a visit to Vienna, Austria. He later said he based the figure on an estimate of 100 bodies per day brought to morgues and hospitals – though such a calculation would come out closer to 130,000 in total.
“It is an estimate,” al-Shemari said. He blamed Sunni insurgents, Wahhabis – Sunni religious extremists – and criminal gangs for the deaths.
At least 45 Iraqis were killed or found dead in continuing sectarian violence Thursday, with 16 of the victims killed in bombings at Baghdad markets. For the fifth straight day, insurgent and militia mortar teams traded fire in the capital’s northern neighborhoods.
Al-Shemari, while not explaining the death toll estimate, was more precise about the government’s increasingly public and insistent demands for a speedier U.S. transfer of authority to Iraqi forces and the withdrawal of American troops to their bases and from Iraq’s cities and towns.
“The army of America didn’t do its job. … They tie the hands of my government,” said al-Shemari, a Shiite.
“They should hand us the power. We are a sovereign country,” he said, adding that the first step would be for American forces to leave population centers.
Al-Shemari is a controversial figure and a member of the movement of radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Some U.S. officials have complained that the ministry has diverted supplies to al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army militia.
In August, U.S. troops arrested seven of al-Shemari’s personal guards in a raid on his office. The U.S. never explained the raid, but Iraqi officials said Americans suspected the guards were part of a militia.
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