Baghdad’s central morgue received nearly 1,600 bodies last month -- the highest number since the February bombing of a Shiite shrine sparked a wave of sectarian killings, a morgue official said on Wednesday.
The figures show the level of violence in Iraq has increased even after the killing on June 7 of al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in a U.S. air strike.
In the latest violence, a car bomb exploded near a mosque in Baghdad on Wednesday, killing six people and injuring 17 others, Interior Ministry and police sources said.
The bomb went off near the al-Uawash mosque in a religiously mixed neighborhood in western Mansur district. All victims were civilians, police said.
'June is the highest month'
Morgue assistant manager Abdul Razzaq al-Obaidi said the 1,595 tally for June compared to 1,375 bodies in May and 1,155 in April.
“June is the highest month in terms of receiving cases of violence since Samarra,” he told Reuters, referring to the blast that destroyed the revered Golden Mosque in Samarra on Feb. 22 and pushed the country toward all-out civil war.
Obaidi said most of the bodies had gunshot wounds to the head -- a common feature of sectarian killings.
The U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, said on Tuesday the death of Zarqawi had not improved security.
Zarqawi was blamed for a campaign of car bombs and suicide attacks that U.S. and Iraqi officials said was aimed at sparking a civil war among Shiites and once-dominant Sunnis.
Iraq’s health, interior and defense ministries consistently provide lower figures than those released by the morgue.
According to the ministries, 1,095 people were killed across Iraq in June, but that figure also includes Iraqi policemen and Iraqi soldiers killed by insurgents in clashes or bomb attacks.
Shiite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, who was sworn into office in May, has unveiled a national reconciliation plan aimed at easing violence.
