The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq on Wednesday criticised Baghdad for concealing the casualty figures from its sectarian war and alleged that many detainees have "disappeared."
While placing the blame for the majority of violent civilian deaths on the insurgents and illegal militias fighting in Iraq, UNAMI expressed concern about the human rights record of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's government.
In its quarterly report on the human rights situation, the UN agency said the Iraqi government had stopped providing casualty figures and denied that its previous reports had exaggerated the death toll in the conflict.
In a report on January 16, UNAMI said more than 34,400 people had died in the daily acts of violence across the country in 2006.
"The Prime Minister's office told UNAMI that the mortality figures contained in the report were exaggerated, although they were in fact figures compiled and provided by a government ministry," UNAMI said on Wednesday.
"It was a matter a regret that the Iraqi government did not provide UNAMI with access to the ministry of health's overall mortality figures for the reporting period," the UN agency said:
"UNAMI emphasises again the utmost need for the Iraqi government to operate in a transparent manner and does not accept the government's suggestion that UNAMI used the mortality figures in an inappropriate fashion."
At a news conference in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone to launch the latest report, UN human rights officer Ivana Vuco insisted: "These figures are probably the most carefully screened."
"Unofficially in follow-up meetings we were told that the government was concerned that people would misconstrue the figures to portray a grim situation," she said.
While being unable to provide statistics because of the government's decision, the new report for the first quarter of 2007 said violence remained a serious problem in Iraq, despite a US and Iraqi security operation.
"In February and March, sectarian violence claimed the lives of large numbers of civilians, including women and children, in both Shiiite and Sunni neighbourhoods," the report said.
"While government officials claimed an initial drop in the number of killings in the latter half of February following the launch of the Baghdad Security Plan, the number of reported casualties rose again in March."
Iraqi and US officials claim that the civilian death toll from Iraq's sectarian war has declined since the launch on February 14 of the Baghdad security plan, but refuse to release exact figures to prove this.
UNAMI said that "violent deaths were a regular feature of several other cities in the governorates of Nineveh, Salaheddin, Diyala and Babel" and not just Baghdad, the centre of the bloodshed.
The Baghdad Security Plan seeks to quell the violence but Vuco said it also had increased the potential for the abuse of detainees' human rights.
"The disappearance of detainees still continues," she said. "We have serious concerns that not all detainees are being registered. We found people looking for detained family members who they were unable to locate."
Most of these detainees are held for "prolonged periods of time without charge in overcrowded conditions," she said.
At least 37,641 people were being held in detention centres across Iraq as of end of March, UNAMI said, adding of these about 3,000 were detained since the Baghdad crackdown began.
The US-led coalition continued to hold 17,898 people, while the rest were in the custody of Iraqi authorities.
UNAMI also raised the issue of displaced people within Iraq since the outbreak of the Sunni-Shiite sectarian violence.
At least 736,422 Iraqis fled their homes amid the sectarian violence, in addition to the 1.2 million displaced before the communal bloodletting broke out after the demolition of the revered shrine in the town of Samarra.
Sunni Al-Qaeda militants bombed the Al-Askari shrine on February 22, 2006, triggering nationwide sectarian bloodshed that continues to this day.
The report said that, with 120,000 internal refugees, Baghdad has borne the brunt of the chaos.
"Many of these were displaced from within Baghdad, moving to more ethnically homogenous and safer areas, while their houses were either given to or were occupied by other displaced families," the report said.
Nearly 87 percent of the displaced people are seeking refuge in the centre and south of the country, it added.
