Man found slain in southern Iraq; motive unknown

Shafaq News/ A young man was found dead on a road north of Samawa in Iraq's southern al-Muthanna governorate on Saturday, local security sources said.

The victim, believed to be in his 30s, had been killed by sword wounds, the sources told Shafaq News Agency. The body has been sent for a post-mortem examination.

Authorities have launched an investigation into the killing but have yet to establish a motive, the sources added.

Seven years after the liberation of its territories from ISIS occupation, Iraq still suffers the effects of armed violence by non-state actors, armed interventions by external state actors, and rising tribal wars in fractured communities operating in a degraded human security environment. The security situation remains volatile, with 2.5 million people in need of humanitarian assistance. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) noted that Ethno-sectarian tensions are on the rise,

In 2023 Iraq Body Count (IBC) documented 537 civilians violently killed. Of these, 216 were attributed to "terrorist elements" including ISIS, 170 to tribal/clan disputes, and 30 to Iraqi/US and Turkish militaries. Another 121 deaths were of individuals whose bodies were found, in some cases with signs of torture but no clear indication of the perpetrator.

However, signaling that Iraq remains a country in a state of low-level conflict as well as cross-border warfare, IBC also documented 786 combatants killed, including Iraqi and Turkish soldiers and various non-state actors including alleged terrorists from ISIS and the PKK. 

Only the civilian deaths from clan disputes represented an increased rate on the previous year: all the other listed categories showed a reduced rate of killing.