BAGHDAD, Jan 8 (Reuters) - Iraq's Health Ministry said it believed there had been a rise in casualties last year but declined to confirm a report on Monday that its statistics showed nearly 23,000 civilians and police were killed in 2006.
The Washington Post published data it said were provided by a Health Ministry official which showed deaths trebled in the second half of last year compared to the first -- a trend borne out by other statistics in a country where data are scarce and ministers have ordered officials not to give casualty figures.
"I don't know specifically the number but I have heard there is an increase in the number of victims," Deputy Health Minister Hakim al-Zamily said.
The Health Ministry figures reported by the Washington Post showed violence rising during the year, with 17,310 civilians and police killed violently in the second half of the year, compared to 5,640 in the first six months of 2006.
The official who gave the statistics said they were not complete and the final tally could be higher.
All such statistics are controversial in Iraq where the government has stopped publishing figures, clearly frustrated at its inability to rein in violence that is partly blamed on militia death squads nominally loyal to parties in power.
The U.S. government, which lost its 3,000th soldier in Iraq just before New Year, also does not give such statistics.
The toll reported by the Washington Post was higher than that given to Reuters by Interior Ministry officials who said this month that 12,320 civilians were reported killed in 2006.
In addition, the ministry reported 1,231 policemen and 602 Iraqi soliders killed, as well as 2,122 "terrorists".
The Interior Ministry figures are viewed as partial and only indicative of trends. Those figures too showed a sharp increase in violence at the end of the year, with 1,930 civilian deaths in December, three and a half times the figure of 548 for January, before a surge in sectarian killing which followed the destruction of a major Shi'ite shrine in February.
A figure of 3,700 civilian deaths in October, the latest tally given by the United Nations based on data from the Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue, was branded exaggerated by the Iraqi government.
The U.N. figure indicates about 120 civilians died each day.
Reports from Reuters journalists around Iraq -- who learn of only a portion of all deaths -- tallied some 426 civilians killed in January last year. By October, that had nearly trebled to 1,178 and it reached 1,706 in November and 1,571 in December.
