VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN IN BASRA CONTINUES

I noted below that about 15 women a month were killed in Basra by religious extremists and Reuters has a lower, but still very disturbing, number.

Basra women fear militants behind wave of killings
Tue Dec 4, 2007 8:37pm EST

BASRA, Iraq (Reuters) - Women in Iraq's southern city of Basra are living in fear. More than 40 have been killed and their bodies dumped in the streets in the past five months for behavior deemed un-Islamic, the city's police chief says.

A warning scrawled in red on a wall threatens any woman who wears makeup or appears in public without an Islamic headscarf with dire punishment. "Whoever disobeys will be punished. God is our witness that we have conveyed this message," it says.

"Some women were killed with their children," Basra police chief, Major-General Abdul-Jalil Khalaf, told Reuters. "One with a six-year-old child, another with an 11-year-old."

A group of tribal Shi'ite leaders told Reuters in October that Shi'ite Islamist political parties were imposing strict Islamic rules in southern provinces and using their armed followers to create a state of fear.