Baghdad, Iraq – The numbers are staggering: In the past eight days, at least 715 Iraqis have fallen victim to the country’s sectarian bloodbath. They’ve been beheaded, tortured and blown up while looking for work. They’ve been shot, kidnapped and felled by mortars.
The number of killings in the past eight days is more than all but a few U.S. states see in a year. Iraq’s death toll has reached at least 1,320 already in November, well above the 1,216 who died in all of October, which was the deadliest month in Iraq since The Associated Press began tracking the figure in April 2005.
At least 112 people were killed nationwide Sunday, following a week of appallingly high daily death tolls: 134, 90, 119, 106, 49, 52 and 53.
The actual totals are likely considerably higher because many deaths are not reported. Victims in those cases are quickly buried in accordance with Muslim custom and never reach morgues or hospitals to be counted.
Under the cloud of that burgeoning death toll, Syria’s foreign minister called Sunday for a timetable for the withdrawal of American forces to help end the violence, in a groundbreaking diplomatic mission to Iraq that comes amid increasing calls for the U.S. to seek cooperation from Syria and Iran.
Walid Moallem, the highest- level Syrian official to visit since the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein, denounced terrorism in Iraq even as Washington mulled its own overture to Damascus for help in Iraq.
Moallem spoke at the end of a day that saw suspected Sunni Muslim bombers kill at least 33 Shiites in two bombings, and at least 23 other people were killed nationwide. In addition, the bodies of 56 murder victims, many of them tortured, were dumped in three Iraqi cities.
