The United Nations said yesterday more than 34,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in violence last year and it chided the government for allowing the killers, some of them inside the security forces, to go unpunished.

Several blasts that killed more than 90 people in Baghdad yesterday were a reminder of the violence that killed 94 people every day last year.

The government is preparing to launch a security plan backed by US reinforcements and billed as a "last chance" for Iraq.

"Without significant progress on the rule of law, sectarian violence will continue indefinitely and eventually spiral out of control," the UN human rights chief in Baghdad, Gianni Magazzeni, told a news conference presenting his latest report.

Sectarian tensions have been inflamed by the botched execution this week of two of Saddam Hussein's close aides.

Magazzeni said 34,452 civilians were killed and more than 36,000 wounded in 2006. He accused the government of failing to provide security and blamed some of the violence on militias colluding with or working inside the police and army.

"The root causes of the sectarian violence lie in revenge killings and lack of accountability for past crimes as well as in the growing sense of impunity for on-going human rights violations," the UN report said.

The casualty figures are much higher than statistics issued by Iraqi government officials. The government itself branded the United Nations' last two-monthly report in November grossly exaggerated and banned its civil servants from releasing data.

Of 4,731 people killed in Baghdad in November and December, Magazzeni said most died of gunshot wounds an indication they were victims of death squad killings rather than the bombings that are also a feature of the Iraqi capital.

Though Baghdad is the epicentre of violence, the UN report said increasing violence in typically less restive provinces such as Mosul illustrated the overall deterioration in security.

University blasts kill 60

A car bomb and a suicide bomber killed 60 people and wounded 110, including many students blown up as they waited at the entrance to a university in Baghdad yesterday, police said.

A car bomb exploded near the main gate of the Mustansiriya University in an area where students, many of them women, wait for minibuses and cars to pick them up to go home. A suicide bomber on foot then blew himself up near a second gate to the campus as people fled the first explosion, police said. Other bombings and a mass shooting brought to at least 95 the death toll in Baghdad on the bloodiest day for such attacks in weeks.

The latest attacks followed the hangings on Monday of two aides to Saddam Hussein, which angered minority Sunni Arabs and fuelled sectarian tension.

source: China Daily/Agencies