At least 600,000 civilians killed in Iraq, study finds
MORE than 600,000 civilians have died in violence across Iraq since the 2003 US invasion, a study by American and Iraqi public health researchers has estimated.
The figure - the highest estimate for the civilian death toll in the war - breaks down to about 15,000 violent deaths a month, quadruple the number of deaths for July given by Iraqi government hospitals and the morgue in Baghdad and published last month in a United Nations report on Iraq.
The number of civilian deaths that month was the highest since the war began.
The study, which was released on Tuesday, is the second by researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The figure of 600,000 is an estimate, not a precise count, and the researchers acknowledged a margin of error that meant the toll could range from 426,369 to 793,663 deaths.
The study uses samples of casualties from Iraqi households to extrapolate an overall figure of 601,027 Iraqis dead from violence between March 2003 and July 2006.
The findings of the previous study, published in 2004, had been criticised as high, in part because of its relatively narrow sampling of about 1000 families, and because it carried a large margin of error.
The new study is more representative and the sampling is broader, the researchers said. They surveyed 1849 Iraqi families in 47 different neighbourhoods across Iraq, based on population size, not on the level of violence, they said.
In late September, the Iraqi Government barred the Baghdad central morgue and the Health Ministry from releasing figures to the media. Now, only the Government is allowed to release figures.
The US military has disputed Iraqi figures, saying they are far higher than the true number of deaths from the insurgency and sectarian violence, in part because they include natural deaths and deaths from ordinary crime. However, the military has not released its own figures for the death toll.
Iraq's mortality rate before the war was about 5.5 people per 1000 per year, the study found. The rate rose to 19.8 deaths per 1000 people in the year ending in June.
Gunshot wounds were the most common cause of death, at 56 per cent of all violent deaths, while car bombs accounted for about 13 per cent. The proportion of deaths caused by the US military declined from March 2003 to June 2006.
The vast majority of deaths documented were substantiated by death certificates. The researchers asked for certificates 87 per cent of the time; when they did, more than 90 per cent of households produced them.
Ronald Waldman, an epidemiologist at New York's Columbia University who worked for the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention for many years, called the survey method "tried and true". "This is the best estimate of mortality we have," Professor Waldman said.
His view was echoed by Sarah Leah Whitson, an official of Human Rights Watch in New York. "We have no reason to question the findings or the accuracy" of the survey, Ms Whitson said.
The New York Times, The Washington Post