680NEWS

The grim news from a Statistics Canada report released Wednesday notes Manitoba had 40 of the 611 homicides that occurred across the country in 2008.

The majority of homicides were in Winnipeg, which had 30 last year.

The national homicide rate was about two per cent higher than the year before, and was attributed mostly to jumps in gang-related killings in British Columbia and Alberta.

Abbotsford-Mission, B.C., had the country's highest homicide rate of cities with 100,000 to 500,000 people. The city had eight homicides last year, some of which were connected to a local gang war.

The report also said the rate of women killed was at the lowest level since 1961.

The drop might be due to fewer spousal homicides, which tended to involve men killing women in the majority of cases.

``Does it mean domestic violence incidents are down? I don't think so,'' said Lori Rudniski, chairwoman of the Family Violence Consortium of Manitoba, a group of 30 organizations dealing with domestic abuse.

``At the agency levels, we're seeing more complex needs from the women and the families, (and) we're seeing the impact of longer-term incidents of domestic violence.''

The StatsCan report notes 24 per cent of homicide victims in 2008 were women.

The report says there's more gang-related killings since the 1990s, cases which typically are crimes against men. Of the 611 homicides across Canada, 62 were spousal homicides. Women are three more times likely to become victims of spousal homicide than men, with 45 women and 17 men killed by a current or former spouse.

There were also 27 people who died at the hands of either a former girlfriend or boyfriend.

Vancouver had 54 homicides in 2008, with a rate of 2.37 per 100,000 people. Montreal had 48, with a rate of 1.27 per 100,000 people.