1,091 killed in Baghdad during just one month

At least 1,091 people were killed in Baghdad alone last month in ongoing sectarian violence, President Jalal Talabani said in a statement.

"We received a report from the morgue about the deaths in Baghdad that 1,091 people were killed between April 1 and 30," Mr Talabani was quoted as saying in a statement issued by his office.




He said "we are shocked and angry at the daily reports of unidentified bodies being discovered and of people killed on the basis of their identity".

Iraq has been engulfed in a tit-for-tat sectarian violence since the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine in the northern town of Samarra on February 22. Thousands of bodies have been discovered across Iraq, mostly of Sunni Arabs, killed in Shiite reprisals after the Samarra bombing.

The President's statement came as gunmen killed 12 people on Wednesday across Iraq, including 11 in an ambush near the restive city of Baquba amid a crucial parliamentary session expected to reveal a new cabinet.

At least 11 people were killed as gunmen ambushed a minibus travelling near Baquba, just north of Baghdad, a local police officer said. He said the gunmen ambushed the bus carrying employees of the local electricity company 10 kilometres north of Baquba and "sprayed it with bullets, killing 11 people wounding four others".

"After the attack the police came to investigate, and at that time the bus exploded, wounding a policeman." The attack came shortly after Tuesday night's deadly suicide truck bombing in the northern town of Tal Afar which left 24 people dead.

The US military said 134 others were wounded in the attack when the bomber exploded a truck carrying flour in the marketplace in Tal Afar, a town hailed by the Bush administration a few months as an example of successful attempts to pacify the restive north.

But we still don't call this a civil war ?