[Peace-discuss] Civilian death toll in Iraq exceeds 100,000

[Lisa Chason]

Reuters     28 October 2004

Civilian death toll in Iraq exceeds 100,000

By Patricia Reaney
>
> London - Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed in violence
> since the
> U.S.-led invasion last year, American public health experts have  
> calculated
> in a report that estimates there were 100,000 "excess deaths" in 18  
> months.
>
>
> The rise in the death rate was mainly due to violence and much of it  
> was
> caused by U.S. air strikes on towns and cities.
>
> "Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess  
> deaths,
> or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq," said Les  
> Roberts of
> the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in a report  
> published
> online by The Lancet medical journal.
>
> "The use of air power in areas with lots of civilians appears to be  
> killing
> a lot of women and children," Roberts told Reuters.
>
> The report came just days before the U.S. presidential election in  
> which the
> Iraq war has been a major issue.
>
> Mortality was already high in Iraq before the war because of United  
> Nations
> sanctions blocking food and medical imports but the researchers  
> described
> what they found as shocking.
>
> The new figures are based on surveys done by the researchers in Iraq
in
> September 2004. They compared Iraqi deaths during 14.6 months before  
> the
> invasion in March 2003 and the 17.8 months after it by conducting  
> household
> surveys in randomly selected neighbourhoods.
>
> Previous estimates based on think tank and media sources put the Iraqi
> civilian death toll at up to 16,053 and military fatalities as high as
> 6,370.
>
> By comparison about 849 U.S. military were killed in combat or attacks

> and
> another 258 died in accidents or incidents not related to fighting,
> according to the Pentagon.
>
> VERY BAD FOR IRAQI CIVILIANS
>
> The researchers blamed air strikes for many of the deaths.
>
> "What we have evidence of is the use of air power in populated urban  
> areas
> and the bad consequences of it," Roberts said.
>
> Gilbert Burnham, who collaborated on the research, said U.S. military

> action
> in Iraq was "very bad for Iraqi civilians".
>
> "We were not expecting the level of deaths from violence that we found

> in
> this study and we hope this will lead to some serious discussions of  
> how
> military and political aims can be achieved in a way that is not so
> detrimental to civilians populations," he told Reuters in an
interview.
>
> The researchers did 33 cluster surveys of 30 households each,  
> recording the
> date, circumstances and cause of deaths.
>
> They found that the risk of death from violence in the period after
the
> invasion was 58 times higher than before the war.
>
> Before the war the major causes of death were heart attacks, chronic
> disorders and accidents. That changed after the war.
>
> Two-thirds of violent deaths in the study were reported in Falluja,
the
> insurgent held city 50 km (32 miles) west of Baghdad which had been
> repeatedly hit by U.S. air strikes.
>
> "Our results need further verification and should lead to changes to  
> reduce
> non-combatant deaths from air strikes," Roberts added in the study.
>
> Richard Horton, editor of The Lancet, said the research which was  
> submitted
> to the journal earlier this month had been peer-reviewed, edited and
> fast-tracked for publication because of its importance in the evolving
> security situation in Iraq.
>
> "But these findings also raise questions for those far removed from  
> Iraq --
> in the governments of the countries responsible for launching a  
> pre-emptive
> war," Horton said in an editorial.
>
> http://www.reuters.co.uk/ 
> newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=61145
> 5§ion=news
>