More Than 3,000 Killed In Iraq Attacks: P.M.

BASRA, Iraq, Sept 12 (AFP) - More than 3,000 people have been killed and over 12,000 wounded in "terrorist attacks" in Iraq, Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said Sunday.
"Terrorist attacks in Iraq have killed more than 3,000 martyrs and wounded more than 12,000," he told journalists in the main southern city of Basra, without specifying a time period for his calculation.
Since Saddam Hussein was toppled from power by the 2003 US-led invasion, the country has been bogged down in a persistent insurgency, which Washington blames on loyalists of the former strongman and foreign terror networks.