Iraq limits data on death toll from violence: UN

United Nations, Oct 21: Iraq's Health Ministry will no longer give death toll data to the United Nations, jeopardizing a vital source of information on the impact of the fighting there, UN officials said.

Ashraf Qazi, who heads the UN assistance mission in Iraq, has cabled headquarters in New York to say that Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's office had instructed the Health Ministry to no longer give him mortality data, they said yesterday.

Instead, the data would come from the prime minister's communications director, a change that could politicize the figures. The shift in policy was first reported in Friday's Washington Post.

UN chief spokesman Stephane Dujarric said he would not comment on leaked internal cables but the world body ''has enjoyed excellent cooperation'' with the Health Ministry.

''We very much hope that cooperation will continue,'' he said, adding that the UN mission was discussing the matter with the government.

Finding reliable data about deaths has been a challenge in Iraq.

The UN mission has been obtaining figures for its periodic reports to the Security Council from the Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue.

But morgue officials said earlier this month they had been ordered to stop giving out such data.

US military commanders have said they are sceptical of data from the Health Ministry, which is controlled by supporters of radical Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

The Mehdi Army militia claiming loyalty to Sadr is blamed by US and some Iraqi officials for many sectarian death squad killings in Baghdad.

The death toll figures in UN reports have fed US election-year fears that the George W. Bush administration has floundered in the face of soaring violence in the country invaded by a US-led coalition in March 2003.

US congressional elections are due Nov 7 and analysts say Bush's Republican Party could lose control of one or both houses of Congress, with the violence in Iraq a major issue.

The latest UN figures said 6,599 Iraqi civilians were killed in violence in July and August, 700 more than in the previous two months. Many were tortured to death with electrical cables, acid and power drills because of their religion, the world body said.

REUTERS

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