US military 'responsible for one-third of deaths'
Jonathan Steele and Richard Norton-Taylor Wednesday July 20, 2005 The Guardian
Nearly 25,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the two years since the invasion, and four times as many died at the hands of US-led forces as from suicide bombers and other insurgents, according to a detailed study of the human cost of the conflict.
The survey, which calculates the toll of dead and injured since March 2003, also shows that the rate of criminal violence has risen dramatically.
According to Iraq Body Count and the Oxford Research Group, the two independent researchers behind the study, the figures in the report should be regarded as the "baseline of the minimum number of deaths".
It has concluded that
· at least 24,865 civilians were killed up to March 19 2005;
· 9,270 or 37% died at the hands of the Americans or other coalition forces (86 were killed by British troops, 23 by Italians, and 13 by Ukrainians). Most of these deaths are thought to have occurred during the conflict and its aftermath.
· The second largest cause of death (36%) was criminal violence.
· Anti-occupation forces have been responsible for 2,353 deaths [9.5%].
· At least 50 babies up to the age of two have been killed;
· 1,281 children aged between three and 17 have also died.
Every death was verified by at least two sources before being included in the research, based on figures from Iraqi mortuaries, the Iraqi ministry of health, and media reports.
One of the many surprises in the survey is the huge surge in crime since the invasion.
The survey points to the criminal murder rate soaring 20 fold since the invasion.
"This is the big untold story", said John Sloboda of the Oxford Research Group.
"There has been a massive breakdown in law and order and almost total impunity for criminals." {"Stuff happens." -- Rumsfeld.]
The total number of deaths in the study is significantly lower than the estimated 98,000 figure in a disputed study in the medical journal The Lancet last autumn.
"The key point is that all the studies are talking about tens of thousands of additional deaths," said Prof Sloboda. He said yesterday's report provided "an absolutely firm, unshakeable baseline of the minimum number of violent deaths".
He points to an admission by the then Foreign Office minister, Bill Rammell, in a parliamentary answer on January 11: "The Ministry of Defence has not assisted the Iraqi government efforts to collate casualty numbers. We have no methodology which would allow us to produce accurate estimates."
The study shows that more than 45,000 Iraqis have been wounded since March 2003, two-thirds of them by coalition forces.
Almost twice as many civilians (11,351) died in the second year after the invasion as the first.
The report does not cover deaths of Iraqi forces in combat, but it does include deaths among policemen and recruits queuing to join the security forces in an insurgency which appears to have gathered pace in recent months.
The UK government said yesterday there was no reliable or accurate account of the number of deaths in Iraq and that people were now being killed primarily because of the insurgency.
<snip> -- Jim Devine "Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" -- Richard Feynman