655,000 Iraqis died since 2003, says study

Police secure the site of a car bomb explosion near the gate of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs in Baghdad.

November 10, 2006

By Tom Clifford, Assistant Editor, International

Dubai: The post-invasion death toll in Iraq has been estimated at 655,000 Iraqis, according to a study in the British journal The Lancet.

This shows a staggering increase in fatalities since October 2004 when the journal estimated that 100,000 people had died in the period between the invasion (March 2003) and September 2004.

The figures were compiled by US researchers led by Gilbert Burnham of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore. The researchers compared the mortality rate from January 2002 to January 2003 to gauge the impact of the invasion from March 2003 to June 2006. "The splinter of our [US and British troops] presence in Iraq is increasing, not reducing, violence,'' Lancet editor Richard Horton said.

The research consisted of a random selection of households across Iraq, where people were asked about births, deaths and migration since January 2002 and in the case of death were asked to show documents such as death certificates. The findings (see box) confirm that Iraq has descended into bloodthirsty chaos.

Of the 629 certified deaths, 547 or 87 per cent occurred after March 2003, the post-invasion period.

The researchers then extrapolated these across the country and came to the figure of 654,965 premature deaths - 2.5 per cent of the population - that have occurred since March 2003. Nearly 601,000 of them were due to violence.

The study says although the proportion of deaths attributed to coalition forces has gone down in percentage terms, "the actual numbers have increased every year since the invasion".

The researchers admit the data is open to criticism especially considering the volatile security situation. This had a direct impact on the number of teams that could venture out to interview households and the amount of time they could spend asking questions and collecting data.

"Although such death rates might be common in times of war, the combination of a long duration and tens of millions of people affected has made this the deadliest international conflict of the 21st century," the report says.