Iraq slides toward civil war - World Socialist Web Site
▻http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2014/01/03/iraq-j03.html
Iraq slides toward civil war
By Bill Van Auken
3 January 2014
Heavy fighting erupted Thursday between Iraqi government troops and Sunni militants who seized large parts of Fallujah and Ramadi, two cities in Iraq’s western Anbar province that were at the center of the armed resistance to the US occupation a decade ago.
The renewed fighting came as figures released by the United Nations and other agencies indicated that the 2013 death toll in Iraq has risen to its highest level since the US military “surge” of 2007-2008.
The United Nations put the number of Iraqi civilian lives lost to violence last year at 7,818, with another 1,050 members of the security forces killed over the same period. Another estimate by the British-based group Iraq Body Count (IBC) put the civilian death toll at 9,475.