A double bomb attack at Al-Mustansiriya University in east Baghdad has killed at least 60 students, faculty and employees. The university, near the infamous slum of Sadr City, has been frequently attacked by car bombs and IEDs since Saddam's fall.
An eyewitness said an initial explosion from a car bomb threw people back, and a second blast from a suicide bomber soon followed.
In all, more than 100 people were killed around Iraq Tuesday, in attacks at the university, a marketplace and a Sunni shrine.
The violence comes ahead of a push by U.S. and Iraqi security forces to bring the capital under control. And it occurred as the United Nations released its bimonthly report on the situation in Iraq, which says that more than 34,000 people died in Iraq in 2006.
The attacks prompted a statement from Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, who said that the people responsible were desperate terrorists. He assured Iraqis that the crimes would not go unpunished. He also called on teachers and professors to return to their universities.
The United Nations collected its numbers from Iraq's health ministry, hospitals throughout the country, and other government agencies. The world body said that police officers need to be retrained, the government should fix the justice system, and the cycle of violence and counter violence needs to be stopped.
The U.N. report also said that since an attack on a Shiite shrine last February, nearly half a million Iraqis have been forced to flee their homes and move elsewhere in the country. Human Rights Watch estimates there are up to 2 million refugees outside of Iraq. The agency also reports the U.S. government fell short of its pledge to resettle 500 Iraqi refugees in the 2006 fiscal year. It only resettled 202.
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