Although it rarely ends up on American news these days, if you’re a civilian in Iraq, it remains a very dangerous place to be. A new UN report shows the death toll to be much higher than previously understood. John Iadarola (ThinkTank), Michael Shure (Epic Politics Man), and Elliot Hill (The Lip TV), hosts of the The Young Turks, break it down. Tell us what you think in the comment section below.

“Civilians in Iraq face “staggering” violence on a daily basis, according to a United Nations report released Tuesday, which recorded the killings of 18,802 people and almost twice as many wounded between the beginning of 2014 and the end of October 2015. The period covers the government’s battle with the extremist group Islamic State.

Long after the end of major U.S. combat operations in Iraq, the country continues to be torn by sectarian violence that rarely rises to the level of daily headlines but has taken what Jan Kubis, the U.N. special representative in the country, called an “obscene toll on Iraqi civilians and their communities.”

Although the report does not apportion responsibility for the civilian deaths, it makes clear that the U.N. regards Islamic State as the greatest threat to peace. It refers to the group, now headquartered in Syria, as a “scourge” and says it has committed acts that “may, in some cases, amount to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and possibly genocide.””*

Read more here: http://www.latimes.com/world/middleea…