Nearly 19,000 killed in Iraqi violence: UN

The number of civilians killed in violence in Iraq over the past two years is "staggering," the UN said Tuesday, with a death toll of at least 18,802 people and another 36,245 injured, AFP reported on Tuesday. Those figures, which are likely an underestimate, count casualties incurred from January 1, 2014 through October 31, 2015, according to a report by the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq and the UN human rights agency. "Those being held are predominantly women and children and come primarily from the Yezidi community, but a number are also from other ethnic and religious minority communities," said the joint report issued in Geneva, Reuters reported on Tuesday. "Even the obscene casualty figures fail to accurately reflect exactly how terribly civilians are suffering in Iraq," UN rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein warned in a statement, according to AFP. "The figures capture those who were killed or maimed by overt violence, but countless others have died from the lack of access to basic food, water or medical care," he pointed out. The UN said around 3.2 million people have been internally displaced in Iraq since the beginning of 2014 when the Islamic State (IS) group took over large parts of the country and also controls large parts of neighboring Syria. The UN gave specific attention to the atrocities committed by the IS jihadists, detailing "numerous examples of killings ... in gruesome public spectacles, including by shooting, beheading, bulldozing, burning alive and throwing people off the top of buildings." It also decried reports of IS murdering child soldiers who tried to flee, and lamented that the jihadists "continued to subject women and children to sexual violence, particularly in the form of sexual slavery." "These acts may, in some instances, amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide," according to the report, which was based largely on witness and victim testimony.