U.N. study: Iraqi civilian death toll nearly three times more than government claims

~ Deputy health minister disputes report.

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- Twin car bombs tore through a leading Baghdad university as students left classes Tuesday in the deadliest attack in Iraq in nearly two months, and the United Nations reported 34,452 civilians were slain last year, nearly three times more than the government reported.

A total of 142 Iraqis were killed or found dead Tuesday, in what appeared to be a renewed campaign of Sunni insurgent violence against Shiite targets. The sharp uptick in deadly attacks coincided with the release of U.N. figures that showed an average of 94 civilians died each day in sectarian bloodshed in 2006.

The blasts wrecked two small buses as students at Al-Mustansiriya University were lining up for the ride home at about 3:45 p.m., according to Taqi al-Moussawi, a university dean.

The attackers stationed a man wearing a suicide belt in the expected path of fleeing students to take even more lives, but he was spotted and shot by security men before he could blow himself up, the dean said.

A lone mourner grieves over the graves of Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam's half brother and former intelligence chief, grave in the back, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar, head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court, who had been executed Monday in Baghdad, at daybreak Tuesday Jan 16, 2007, in Ouja, 115 kilometers (70 miles) north of Baghdad, Iraq. (AP Photo/Bassem Daham)

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki blamed the attack on "terrorists and Saddamists" seeking revenge for Monday's hanging of two of Saddam Hussein's top aides, convicted with him for the slaying of 148 Shiite men and boys after a 1982 assassination attempt in the northern town of Dujail.

President Bush said Tuesday the unruly execution of Saddam Hussein "looked like it was kind of a revenge killing," making it harder to persuade a skeptical U.S. public that Iraq's government will keep promises central to Bush's plan for a troop increase.

"I was disappointed and felt like they fumbled the particularly the Saddam Hussein execution," the president said in an interview with PBS' Jim Lehrer.

The violence Tuesday against Shiites may signal a campaign by Sunni insurgents to shed as much blood as possible before the deployment of 21,500 more American troops.

The U.N. civilian casualty count for last year was announced in Baghdad by Gianni Magazzeni, the chief of the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq in Baghdad. He said 34,452 civilians died -- an average of 94 a day -- and 36,685 were wounded.

But Dr. Hakem al-Zamili, Iraq's deputy health minister, said the United Nations may be using unreliable sources for its casualty count. "They might be taking the figures from people who are opposed to the government or to the Americans," he said. "They are not accurate."

He said he would provide Iraqi government figures later this week.

In early January, a compilation of Iraqi government figures put last year's civilian deaths at just 12,357. The numbers are gathered monthly by the AP from reports by three Iraqi agencies.

When asked about the difference, Magazzeni said the U.N. figures were compiled from information obtained through the Iraqi Health Ministry, hospitals across the country and the Medico-Legal Institute in Baghdad.

He criticized the government for allowing much of the violence to go unpunished, saying urgent action was needed to re-establish law and order in the country to prevent its slide into all-out civil war.

"Without significant progress in the rule of law, sectarian violence will continue indefinitely and eventually spiral out of control," he warned.

The U.N. report also said that 30,842 people were detained in the country as of Dec. 31, including 14,534 held in U.S. military-run prisons.

At least 470,094 people throughout Iraq have been forced to leave their homes since the bombing of an important Shiite shrine, the Golden Dome mosque in Samarra, in February, the U.N. accounting said.

The report said the violence has disrupted education by forcing schools and universities to close, as well as sending professionals fleeing from the country.

In a summary of the report posted on its Web site Tuesday, UNAMI said Iraq's women were particularly vulnerable, citing cases where young women were abducted by armed militia and late discovered sexually assaulted, tortured or murdered. In many cases, the agency said, families refuse to retrieve the bodies out of shame.

As bombs detonated at Al-Mustansiriya University on Tuesday, there were a series of other attacks on Shiite neighborhoods in central Baghdad.

A bomb planted on a motorcycle exploded in a used auto and motorcycle parts market in a Shiite neighborhood. As people rushed to aide the victims of the first blast, a suicide car bomber drove his car into the crowd. Fifteen people died.

Raid Abbas, a 26-year-old who received shrapnel wounds in the attack said he went to the market because the city had been quieter over the past two weeks.

"Shortly after midday, I heard an explosion. Motorcycles were flying in the air, people were falling dead and wounded," he said from his hospital bed.

About 45 minutes later, gunmen riding two motorcycles and in a van fired on another outdoor market in a mainly Shiite neighborhood near Sadr City. Police said at least 11 people were killed.

Of the 142 Iraqis killed or found dead Tuesday, 124 died in Baghdad. Police said they had been unable to complete their tally of dumped corpses in the eastern half of the city because of violence there.