Iraq Government says 85,000 Iraqis killed in 2004-08

[democracy1st]

BAGHDAD – At least 85,000 Iraqis lost their lives from 2004-2008 in violence, the government said in its first comprehensive official tally released since the war began.

The report by the Human Rights Ministry said 85,694 people were killed from the beginning of 2004 to Oct. 31, 2008 and 147,195 were wounded. It counted Iraqi civilians, military and police but did not cover U.S. military deaths, insurgents, or foreigners, including contractors or U.S. forces. And it did not include the first months of the war after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

The Associated Press reported in April that the government had recorded 87,215 Iraqi deaths from 2005 to February 2009, a toll very similar to the latest release. It was based on government statistics obtained by the AP and covered violence ranging from catastrophic bombings to execution-style slayings.

Until the AP report, the government's toll of Iraqi deaths had been one of the most closely guarded secrets of the war. It has been hotly disputed because of the high political stakes in a war opposed by many countries and by a large portion of the American public. Critics on each side accuse the other of manipulating the toll to sway public opinion.


Iraq's death toll continued to climb on Wednesday when three near simultaneous blasts struck the southern Shiite holy city of Karbala. At least six people were killed, Iraqi police and medical officials said.

The ministry's report said 1,279 children and 2,334 women were killed in the five-year period covered. It said 263 university professors, 21 judges, 95 lawyers and 269 journalists were killed, singling out some of the professions which were specifically targeted as the country descended into chaos.

According to the report, 2006 was the deadliest year with 32,622 killed or found dead. The toll for 2004 was 11,313, rising to 15,817 the next year. The second deadliest year in the period covered was 2007 with 19,155 killed or found dead. The toll fell to 6,787 in 2008, the lowest yearly count for the period.

Statistics from the initial months of the war have been extremely difficult to obtain as there was no functioning Iraqi government during that time and the interim government was not seated until mid-2004. The difficulties of quantifying the loss were compounded by the fact that records were not always compiled centrally, and the brutal insurgency sharply limited on-the-scene reporting. The U.S. military never shared its data.

"The situation was chaotic and there was an absence of government institutions. The whole country was in total anarchy," Amin said, referring to 2003.


The toll released Tuesday was based on death certificates issued by the Health Ministry. The tolls measure only violent deaths — people killed in attacks such as the shootings, bombings, mortar attacks and beheadings that have ravaged Iraq. They exclude indirect factors such as damage to infrastructure, health care and stress that caused thousands more to die.

Some experts favor cluster surveys, in which conclusions are drawn from a select sampling of households. The largest cluster survey in Iraq was conducted in 2007 by the World Health Organization and the Iraqi government. It concluded that about 151,000 Iraqis had died from violence in the 2003-05 period, but that included insurgents.

A more controversial cluster study conducted between May and July 2006 by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, published in the Lancet medical journal, estimated that 601,027 Iraqis had died due to violence. The authors said roughly 50,000 more died from nonviolent causes such as heart disease and cancer because of deteriorating health conditions caused by the war.

Critics argue that such surveys are flawed in Iraq because the security situation prevents a proper sampling. They also have margins of error that could skew the numbers by the tens of thousands.

While the Pentagon maintains meticulous records of the number of American troops killed — at least 4,349 as of Wednesday — it does not publicly release comprehensive Iraqi casualty figures. American units around the country do compile figures, drawing them mostly from the Iraqi military. They are not released publicly but are used to determine trends.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091014/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iraq