Reflections on the "New American" Revolution
Tuesday, July 19, 2005
25,000 Civilians Killed Since Iraq Invasion, Says Report
The number of Iraqi civilians who met violent deaths in the two years after the US-led invasion was today put at 24,865 by an independent research team.
The figures, compiled from Iraqi and international media reports, found US and coalition military forces were responsible for 37% of the deaths, with anti-occupation forces and insurgents responsible for 9%. A further 36% were blamed on criminal violence.
Civilian deaths attributed to US and coalition military forces peaked in the invasion period from March to May 2003 - which accounts for 30% of all civilian deaths in the two-year period - but the longer-term trend has been for increasing numbers to die at the hands of insurgents.
Figures obtained last week from the Iraqi interior ministry put the average civilian and police officer death toll in insurgent attacks from August 2004 to March 2005 at 800 a month.
John Sloboda of the Iraq Body Count project, which co-authored the report with Oxford Research Group, said the Iraqi civilian death toll was the "forgotten cost" of the decision to go to war in Iraq.
"On average, 34 Iraqis every day have met violent deaths since the invasion of March 2003," he said at the launch of the report in London.
... A report published last year in the medical journal the Lancet suggested the chances of a violent death in Iraq were 58 times higher after the invasion than before it.
Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University in the US and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad put the civilian death toll at up to 100,000 since the invasion.
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