Attacks mainly targeting Iraqi security forces killed 12 people on Tuesday, officials said, bringing July's death toll to 622, the highest monthly figure in a year marked by spiralling violence. Another 1,395 people were also wounded through to July 23, according to AFP figures based on reports from security and medical sources. The second-deadliest month of the year so far has been May, when 614 people died in attacks and 1,550 were wounded.
More than 2,800 people have been killed so far in 2013. Much of the violence on Tuesday was centred in northern Iraq. In Nineveh province, four kidnapped police were found shot dead, and gunmen also killed a prison guard and a barber. Kirkuk province was also hit by attacks that killed two Sahwa anti-al Qaeda militiamen and a Kurdish security forces member, and wounded a policeman.
And a bombing killed one person and wounded another near Baquba, also north of Baghdad, while gunmen killed two police and wounded five in an attack on a checkpoint near Baiji. The violence came as al Qaeda front group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant claimed brazen assaults on two prisons in Iraq that killed over 40 people and saw hundreds of inmates, including senior militants, escape.
Iraq has faced years of attacks by militants, but analysts say widespread discontent among members of its Sunni minority that the government has failed to address has fuelled the surge in unrest this year. Sunni Muslims accuse the Shia-led government of marginalising and targeting their community, including via unwarranted arrests and terrorism charges. Protests broke out in Sunni-majority areas at the end of 2012 and are still ongoing. On April 23, security forces moved against protesters near the town of Hawijah in the north, sparking clashes that killed 53 people and sending tensions soaring.
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