UN: 34K Iraqis killed in 2006

NY Times:

The United Nations reported Tuesday that more than 34,000 Iraqis were killed in violence last year, a figure that represents the first comprehensive annual count of civilian deaths and a vivid measure of the failure of the Iraqi government and American military to provide security.

The report was the first attempt at hand-counting individual deaths for an entire year. It was compiled using reports from morgues, hospitals and municipal authorities across Iraq, and was nearly three times higher than an estimate for 2006 compiled from Iraqi ministry tallies by The Associated Press earlier this month.

To add, the UN figure is also higher than the tally from the Health Ministry, which was released a little while after the AP count.

And, as further background, the UN released a tally last summer that claimed 14k+ deaths over the first six months of 2006. So this follow-up suggests the rate of killings has increased slightly over the last half of the year.