Countries affected by explosive violence in January

Iraq

Improvised explosive devices (IEDs) were responsible for a high number of the civilian casualties recorded by the EVMP in January. IEDs caused 75% of the recorded civilian casualties of explosive violence. This is a significant increase compared with the overall percentage of civilians who the EVMP recorded killed or injured by IEDs during 2011 (55%).

Many of these casualties occurred in Iraq, every recorded civilian fatality from explosive violence in the last month was caused by IEDs (219 civilian deaths were reported). This was in large part due to a series of bombings which killed and injured Shiite pilgrims as they travelled to the city of Karbala and other holy sites in the south of the country.

In one of the worst incidents, 53 civilians were killed on 14 January as they walked to a shrine on the outskirts of the southern city of Basra.4 Witnesses and officials claimed that the blast, which also injured 137 people, occurred when a man detonated an explosive vest next to a police checkpoint in the town of al-Zubair