More than 1,000 killed in Iraq violence in May

Mourners pray over the coffin of a victim killed in one of Monday's bomb attacks, during a funeral in Najaf, around 160 km (99 miles) south of Baghdad May 20, 2013. REUTERS/Ahmad Mousa

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - More than 1,000 people were killed in violence in Iraq in May, making it the deadliest month since the sectarian slaughter of 2006-07, the United Nations said on Saturday, as fears mounted of a return to civil war.

Nearly 2,000 people have been killed in the last two months as al Qaeda and Sunni Islamist insurgents, invigorated by the Sunni-led revolt in Syria and by Sunni discontent at home, seek to revive the kind of all-out inter-communal conflict that killed tens of thousands five years ago.