Ministry Sources: Iraq civilian deaths hit new record

Victims of a triple car bombing in Baghdad last week

BAGHDAD, Jan 2 (Reuters) - The number of Iraqi civilians killed in political violence edged to a new record high in December after a big leap the previous month, data from Interior Ministry officials showed on Tuesday.

The statistics, widely viewed as an indicative but only partial record of violent deaths, showed 12,320 civilians were killed in 2006 in what officials classified as "terrorist" violence -- half of them in the last four months.

The ministry figure of 1,930 civilian deaths in December is three and a half times the figure of 548 for January, before the surge in sectarian killing which followed the destruction of a major Shi'ite shrine in February.

All such statistics are controversial in Iraq. A figure of 3,700 civilian deaths in October, the latest tally given by the United Nations based on data from the Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue, was branded exaggerated by the Iraqi government.

The U.N. figure indicates about 120 civilians died each day.

Clearly frustrated at its inability to rein in violence that is partly blamed on militia death squads nominally loyal to parties in power, the government has stopped publishing its own figures and has barred its officials from giving out such data.

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