By Tom Walker, Director, Assaye Risk
COUNTRY OVERVIEW
This week saw no huge changes in the security situation other than a marginal increase in the number of high impact bombings and a slight geographical shift south. We continue to see pervading levels of daily violence with significant numbers of fatalities and wounding’s.
The number of people killed in militant attacks across Iraq reached 761 in June, lower than the month of May (where more than 1,000 people were killed in violence, making it the deadliest month since the height of sectarian bloodletting in 2006-07). The vast majority of casualties in June were civilian, with 131 policemen and 76 members of the Iraqi security forces also killed, the United Nations has reported with the worst affected region being Baghdad, where 258 people were killed. Salahuddin, Diyala, Nineveh and Anbar provinces each exceeded 100.
There have been a number of significant attacks across the country this week. On Friday 28 June a series of bombs near a bakery, at a funeral, inside a senior police officer's car and at a football stadium killed at least 22 people across Iraq. Twin blasts at a neighbourhood football stadium killed five players in Madaen, about 30 km southeast of Baghdad, and a roadside bomb near a bakery shop in the west of the capital left three people dead.
Dujail in southern Iraq??!!