[A-List] Iraq: estimating the number killed

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Up to 15,000 people killed in invasion, claims thinktank

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington
Wednesday October 29, 2003
The Guardian

As many as 15,000 Iraqis were killed in the first days of America's invasion
and occupation of Iraq, a study produced by an independent US thinktank said
yesterday. Up to 4,300 of the dead were civilian noncombatants.

The report, by Project on Defence Alternatives, a research institute from
Cambridge, Massachussets, offers the most comprehensive account so far of
how many Iraqis died.

The toll of Iraq's war dead covered by the report is limited to the early
stages of the war, from March 19 when American tanks crossed the Kuwaiti
border, to April 20, when US troops had consolidated their hold on Baghdad.

Researchers drew on hospital records, official US military statistics, news
reports, and survey methodology to arrive at their figures.

They were also able to make use of two earlier studies on Iraq's war dead
from Iraq Body Count, a website which has kept a running total of those
killed, and the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, which has sought
to count the dead and injured of the war in order to pursue compensation
claims for their families.

The new report, which estimates Iraq's war dead at between 10,800 and
15,100, uses a far more rigorous definition of civilian than the other
studies to arrive at a figure of between 3,200 and 4,300 civilian
noncombatants.

It breaks down the combat deaths of up to 10,800 Iraqis who fought the
American invasion. The figures include regular Iraqi troops, as well as
members of the Ba'ath party and other militias.

The killing was concentrated - with heavy casualties at the southern
entrances of Baghdad - but as many as 80% of the Iraqi army units survived
the war relatively unscathed, in part because troops deserted.

As many as 5,726 Iraqis were killed in the US assault on Baghdad, when the
streets of the Iraqi capital were strewn with the bodies of people trying to
flee the fighting.

As many as 3,531 - more than half - of the dead in the assault on the
capital were noncombatant civilians, according to the report.

Overall in Iraq, the ratio of civilian to military deaths is almost twice as
high as it was in the last Gulf war in 1991. The overall toll of the first
war was far higher - with estimates of 20,000 Iraqi soldiers and 3,500
civilians killed.

However, Operation Iraqi Freedom, as the US military calls this year's war,
has proved far deadlier to Iraqi civilians both in absolute numbers, and in
the proportion of noncombatant to military deaths.

The findings defy the reasoning that precision-guided weapons spare civilian
lives. According to the author of the study, Carol Conetta, 68% of the
munitions used in this war were precision-guided, compared with 6.5 % in
1991.

However, he argued yesterday that his report demonstrated that sophisticated
weaponry did not necessarily offer protection to civilians in war zones.

"Many of the recent wars have been fought with the notion of a new type of
warfare that produce very low civilian casualties. What we see here is that
in fact we don't have that magic bullet," he said.

"In this war in particular we see that improved capabilities in precision
attacks have been used to pursue more ambitious objectives rather than
achieve lower numbers of civilian dead."

Counting the human cost

Total war dead (Iraq)
Between 10,800 and 15,100, with a midpoint of 12,950

Combatants killed (Iraq)
Between 7,600 and 10,800, with a midpoint of 9,200

Noncombatants killed (Iraq)
Between 3,200 and 4,300, with a midpoint of 3,750

War dead (Baghdad)
Between 4,376 and 5,726, with a midpoint of 5,051

Combatants killed (Baghdad)
Between 2,224 and 3,531, with a midpoint of 2,878

Noncombatants killed (Baghdad)
Between 1,990 and 2,357, with a midpoint of 2,174

· Source: Project on Defence Alternatives research
www.comw.org/pda