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Violence kills 42 in Iraq as daily death tolls increase

Violence appeared to be on the rise in Iraq after a day that saw at least 42 people die -- numbers that harken back to the darker days of the country's sectarian battles that had eased over the past year.

Iraqi sources confirmed a roadside bomb attack on Tuesday that killed 16 passengers on a bus in southern Iraq. The US military, however, claimed no one died in the attack, which was targeting a passing military convoy. The reason for the discrepancy was not immediately clear.

Hadi Badr al-Riyahi, head of the Nasiriyah provincial health directorate confirmed yesterday that the attack on the bus traveling from Najaf to Basra killed 16 civilians and wounded 20, with Nasiriyah and Suq al-Shiyoukh hospitals receiving 10 dead and 10 injured and the rest going to Basra.

At the time, a local policeman and the assistant bus driver also said 16 people were killed.

But Major Brad Leighton, a military spokesman in Baghdad, disputed that claim, saying only one coalition soldier and one Iraqi civilian were wounded in the attack south of Nasiriyah, 320km southeast of Baghdad.

"The bus only received minor damage -- it drove away on its own. We were right there, and our numbers say one coalition force wounded, one local national wounded," he said

The military also announced the death of three US soldiers in a roadside bombing north of Baghdad on Monday, bringing to eight the number of troops who died that day.

The last time so many US military personnel were killed in Iraq was Sept. 10, when 10 died.

There had been a 60 percent drop in attacks across the country since June, the US military said, but last week brought a sudden spike in violence. Last Thursday, two massive bombs killed 68 people in Baghdad's Karradah neighborhood, while on March 3, two car bombs killed 24 people in the capital.

An Associated Press count showed that at the height of unrest from November 2006 to August last year, on average approximately 65 Iraqis died each day as a result of violence.

As conditions improved, the daily death toll steadily declined. It reached its lowest point in more than two years in January, when on average 20 Iraqis died each day.

Those numbers have since jumped. Last month, approximately 26 Iraqis died each day as a result of violence, and so far this month, that number is up to 39 daily. These figures reflect the months in which people were found, and not necessarily -- in the case of mass graves -- the months in which they were killed.
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