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100,000 Iraqi Civilians Killed Since Invasion: Study
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Digging the rubble for a civilian victim
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LONDON,
October 29 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Over 100,000
civilians -- half of whom women and children -- have lost their lives
since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, according to a study
published by a respected British medical weekly.
The
study, based on interviews among Iraqi households and an extrapolation
of the data, was led by experts from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg
School of Public Health in Baltimore, in the US state of Maryland, Lancet
reported.
“Making
conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess deaths or
more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq,” the authors
said.
“Violence
accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition
forces accounted for most violent deaths.”
Their
figure is based on data from 988 households from 33 randomly-selected
neighborhoods in Iraq, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The
study found that more than half of those who died were women and
children killed in air strikes.
Count
Failure
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US air strikes destroy homes over the heads of Iraqis |
The
study also savagely criticized the failure by the US-led forces to
count Iraqi casualties, while keeping an accurate count of their
soldiers killed since the invasion of the oil-rich country.
It
slammed US General Tommy Franks for his widely quoted remark that
“we don't do body counts”.
The
researchers also said that the Geneva Convention requires occupying
forces to protect the civilian population, and add the fact that more
than half of the deaths caused by them were women and children is
“cause for concern”.
As
the United States declared that its soldiers killed in Iraq hit 1,000,
Iraqis demand to know why so little
attention was being given to their rather large but forgotten
victims.
The
new findings came as starkly different from those previous estimates
which have put the Iraqi death toll at around 10,000.
The
authors themselves acknowledge, however, that the sampling strategy
“might not have captured the overall mortality experience in
Iraq.”
The
researchers recruited seven Iraqi team members who were willing to
risk their lives to interview households about deaths that occurred
from January 2002 to March 2003 and from March 2003 to September 2004,
British daily the Independent quoted the study.
“In
the 988 households visited, which were randomly selected, there were
46 deaths in the 14.6 months before the invasion and 142 deaths in the
17.8 months after it.”
Of
the 142 deaths, half (73) were caused by violence. More than
two-thirds of these violent deaths - 52 - happened in the Fallujah
area, scene of the heaviest fighting, as per the daily.
The
researchers say this makes Fallujah a “statistical outlier” which
may not be representative of the rest of Iraq. They therefore excluded
it from their calculations.
If
Fallujah is stripped out of the calculations, the overall estimate for
the civilian tally nationwide comes to just under 100,000, at 98,000.
If
it is included, the death toll would rise around 200,000, although the
researchers stress that there is “substantial... uncertainty” in
making a projection of that kind.
Furious
Reactions
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“It
is really horrifying. When will Tony Blair stop saying it is all
beneficial for the Iraqi people since Saddam Hussein has gone?” said
Short |
The
figures provoked a furious response in Westminster, Britain.
Clare
Short, the former cabinet minister who resigned over the Iraq
invasion, said: “It is really horrifying. When will Tony Blair stop
saying it is all beneficial for the Iraqi people since Saddam Hussein
has gone? How many more lives are to be taken?”
“It
is no wonder, given this tragic death toll, that the resistance to the
occupation is growing,” Short was quoted by the Independent as
saying Friday, October 29.
“We
have all relied on Iraqi body counts from media reports. That is
clearly an under-estimate and this shows that it was a very big
under-estimate. It is truly dreadful. Tony Blair talks simplistically
about it getting better in Iraq. These figures prove it is just an
illusion,” she said.
British
MPs said the assault on Fallujah expected after the US presidential
election next Tuesday, November 2, would add to the growing death toll
among civilians, according to the daily.
Alan
Simpson, a member of Labor Against the War, said: “Iraq has not seen
this scale of slaughter since its war with Iran. At some point, the
slaughter of civilians in the name of peace has to become a crime of
war. This is not a matter of indifference but criminality. These
figures are horrific, but it is a scandal that the world remains
silent.”
A
spokesperson for the Stop the War Coalition was quoted by the daily as
saying: “The number of dead has exceeded even our worst fears. This
war has been shown to be based on lies and to be illegal.
“It
now turns out to be one of the bloodiest in modern times. We must
withdraw our troops now and allow the Iraqis to run their own
country.”
The
US and Britain had made the case for the invasion of Iraq on claims
that it had weapons of mass desertion, none of which have been found
in the Arab country.
That
raised fears the invasion of Iraq -- which has the world's second
largest oil reserves -- was based on false pretexts.
British
Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said after the survey was released his
government would study it “in a very serious way”
“This
is a very high estimate, indeed,” he told the BBC.
Click
Here to Read the Findings in Detail
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