Iraq’s Insurgents Picking Up Attacks In New Year

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Iraq’s insurgents continued to carry out a high level of activity in the third week of January 2015. Security incidents went down from August to December, but have picked up since then. On the other hand, pro-government forces were on the offensive in Diyala, Ninewa and Salahaddin for the week. In the second half of 2014 the security forces, militias and peshmerga regained the initiative and began retaking lost territory, while the insurgency cooled off as it usually does at the end of the year. Now Iraq may be witnessing both forces simultaneously launching attacks throughout the center of the country.

From January 15-21, 2015 there were a reported 181 security incidents. That was up from January 8-14 when there were 172, but on par with the first week of the month, which had 184 incidents. That averaged out to 25.5 attacks per day. In comparison, in December there were 21.8, 19.7 in November, and 23.9 in October. Baghdad saw the most violence with 44 attacks, followed by 41in Anbar, 40 in Salahaddin, 23 in Ninewa, 11 in Diyala and Kirkuk each, six in Babil, three in Basra, and two in Maysan. If this trend continues early 2015 could see the same level of attacks as during the height of the summer offensive.

This violence led to 390 people losing their lives and another 515 wounded. Those were at the same levels as the previous two weeks, and higher than December. So far there has been an average of 74.0 deaths per day in the new year. In the previous month there were 57.2. January 15-21 saw 88 members of the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), 15 Sahwa, 27 peshmerga, and 260 civilians die, along with 38 ISF, 41 Sahwa, one peshmerga, and 435 civilians wounded. Broken down by province Ninewa had the most deaths with 105, then Salahaddin with 87, Baghdad with 67, Diyala with 64, Anbar with 49, Babil with 11, five in Kirkuk, and one each in Basra and Maysan.