UN: Iraq death toll tops 1,000 in July

Iraq in July suffered its deadliest month of political violence since 2008, according to a U.N. report released Thursday, as sectarian attacks claimed 1,000 lives and left more than 2,000 people wounded. The sharp uptick in attacks in recent months coincides with an escalation of the civil war in Syria, which has increasingly traversed the border with Iraq.

"The impact of violence on civilians remains disturbingly high, with at least 4,137 civilians killed and 9,865 injured since the beginning of 2013," Gyorgy Busztin, the acting special representative of the U.N. secretary-general for Iraq, said on Thursday.

"We haven’t seen such numbers in more than five years, when the blind rage of sectarian strife that inflicted such deep wounds upon this country was finally abating," added Busztin. He urged Iraq's political leaders to avoid a return to the deadliest days of the country's civil war.

Eliana Nabaa, a spokeswoman for the U.N. mission in Iraq, named Al Qaeda - as the main culprit behind the surging violence.

"Ordinary Iraqis, innocent people are the main victims. Indiscriminately, women, men, youth or children are killed while going about their daily lives, in cafes, in mosques, in parking cars, in markets, in the streets," Nabaa told Al Jazeera. "The entire society is hostage to this random violence, which is eroding communities and trust in the future. Violence is undermining everything and makes it difficult to improve the well-being of the population."

Sarah Holewinkski, executive director of Civilians in Conflict, an advocacy group that helps people caught in war, said the bloodshed takes an intense psychological toll after a decade of exposure to warfare.

"You've really got a traumatized generation with no idea of when these cycles of violence are going to stop," Holewinski said.

Iraqi officials shared the U.N.'s view that the source of the violence was a resurgent Al Qaeda, spurred in particular by the breakdown of authority in the civil war next door.

“The root of the recent uptick in violence in Iraq is a result of Al Qaeda that seeks to destabilize the region,” Iraq's embassy in Washington said in statement. "As you know, it is a critical time in the region right now; and events in Syria also have a ripple effect around the region, including in Iraq."

The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad has aligned itself with the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus, and has supplied economic aid to compensate for the downturn caused by the war. Both governments have close ties with Iran.

Some of the Sunni insurgent groups fighting on both sides of the border are also closely aligned. For example, when it listed Jabhat al-Nusra -- which has taken a lead on a number of fronts in the anti-Assad insurgency -- as a "foreign terrorist organization," the U.S. government portrayed the Syrian group as an offshoot of Al Qaeda in Iraq. The Iraqi group reinforced that view in April by announcing a formal merger between the two groups. But by June, the resultant organizational squabbles and infighting over combat operations had prompted Al Qaeda's global leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri -- in a letter exclusively obtained by Al Jazeera -- to order the two affiliates to maintain an organizational separation.

He did, however, authorize them to aid each other with "fighters, arms, money, shelter and security."

Although Iraq's government is accused by its critics of maintaining an authoritarian and overly sectarian approach to dealing with its opponents, Baghdad is focused on finding security solutions.  

"The government of Iraq continues to fight terrorism and is working to improve cooperation with our neighboring countries to stop the violence," the Iraqi embassy statement said. "Further, we are focusing on improving our military capabilities to secure our borders."

The State Department reiterated U.S. support for the Iraqi security effort. "While the Iraqis are responsible for their own security and their ability to provide for it is evolving, we consider the government of Iraq an essential partner in a common fight against Al Qaeda – and we have an ongoing basis of dialogue to help facilitate its capacity to degrade and defeat the Al Qaeda network operating inside Iraq," a State Department spokesperson told Al Jazeera.

For now, however, the deepening sectarian political divide inside Iraq, as well as the civil war raging in Syria, are combining to provide Al Qaeda in Iraq with a more favorable operating environment than it has enjoyed for years.

Al Jazeera and wire services