July 9, 2003
Reuters

Iraq Civilian Body Count Passes 6,000

The Iraq Body Count's (IBC) latest figures, based on media reports and more than a dozen counting projects from independent investigators in and outside Iraq, put the minimum number of civilians dead at 6,055 and the maximum at 7,706.

"Both the U.S. and the U.K. said they were taking every effort to minimise civilian casualties and talked a lot about smart, precision weapons," IBC researcher John Sloboda told Reuters.

"From that, one could have expected a clean war with very few casualties, but I don't call 5,000 to 7,000 very few. It is clear the coalition claims were political claptrap."

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[. . . in recent weeks there have been increasing reports of Iraqi men, women and even children being dragged from their homes at night by American patrols, or snatched off the streets and taken, hooded and manacled, to prison camps around the capital. . . .

On the edge of Baghdad International Airport, US military commanders have built a tent city that human rights groups are comparing to the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.--Daniel McGrory, "Families live in fear of midnight call by US patrols," Times (UK), July 9, 2003]

Robert Fisk, "The ugly truth of America's Camp Cropper, a story to shame us all," Independent, July 22, 2003

Robert Fisk, "His sons are dead but Saddam lives," Independent, July 23, 2003

[Studies now put the death toll at as many as 10,000 civilians and 20,000 Iraqi troops. If this does not constitute a "bloodbath", what was the massacre of 3,000 people at the twin towers?--John Pilger, "The War on Truth," ZNet, July 31, 2003]

[After more than five weeks of intensive and thorough investigations carried out by hundreds of our party's cadre, which included all villages, towns, cities and some of the desert areas etc. affected by the aggression (with exception of the Kurdish area), and also by interviewing hundreds of undertakers, hospitals officials and ordinary people in these places, the figure of civilians killed since the beginning of the invasion came to 37,137. This figure does not include militia, para-military or Saddam's Fiday'een.--Dr. Mohammed Al-Obaidi, General Coordinator of the Iraqi Freedom Party]

[. . . more than 6,000 American servicemen have been evacuated for medical reasons since the beginning of the war, including more than 1,500 American soldiers who have been wounded, many seriously.--Jason Burke and Paul Harris, "America's hidden battlefield toll," Guardian, September 14, 2003]

Suzanne Goldenberg, "Up to 15,000 people killed in invasion, claims thinktank," Guardian, October 29, 2003

"Iraq war toll up to 55,000: report," Australian Broadcasting Corporation, November 12, 2003

[U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority, . . . wanted the counting to stop,--Niko Price, "Iraq to Stop Counting Civilian Dead," Associated Press Writer, December 10, 2003]

Andrew Buncombe, "Allied cluster bombs blamed for 1,000 deaths in Iraq," Independent, December 12, 2003

Nancy A. Youssef, "More Iraqi civilians killed by U.S. forces than by insurgents, data shows," Knight Ridder Newspapers, September 24, 2004

[. . . they estimate that 100,000 more Iraqis died than would have been expected had the invasion not occurred. Eighty-four percent of the violent deaths were reported to be caused by the actions of Coalition forces and 95 percent of those deaths were due to air strikes and artillery.--"Iraqi Civilian Deaths Increase Dramatically After Invasion," Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, October 28, 2004]

Jeremy Laurance and Colin Brown, "Revealed: War has cost 100,000 Iraqi lives," Independent, October 29, 2004

[A week before she was killed by a suicide bomber, humanitarian worker Marla Ruzicka forced military commanders to admit they did keep records of Iraqi civilians killed by US forces.--Andrew Buncombe, "Aid worker uncovered America's secret tally of Iraqi civilian deaths," Independent, April 20, 2005]

VIDEO: Study Shows Civilian Death Toll in Iraq More Than 100,000, democracynow.org, December 14, 2005

David Brown, "Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000," Washington Post, October 11, 2006

[There are several reasons why the governments involved in this conflict have been able to confuse the issue of Iraqi deaths. Our Lancet report involved sampling and statistical analysis, which is rather dry reading. Media reports always miss most deaths in times of war, so the estimate by the media-based monitoring system, Iraqbodycount.org (IBC) roughly corresponds with the Iraq government's figures. Repeated evaluations of deaths identified from sources independent of the press and the Ministry of Health show the IBC listing to be less than 10 per cent complete, but because it matches the reports of the governments involved, it is easily referenced.--Les Roberts, "Iraq's death toll is far worse than our leaders admit," Independent, February 14, 2007]

[BRITISH government officials backed the methodology used by scientists who concluded that more than 600,000 Iraqis have been killed since the US-led invasion in 2003, the BBC reported today. . . . the chief scientific adviser to the Defense Ministry, Roy Anderson, described the methods used in the study as "robust" and "close to best practice."--"Iraq death toll survey 'robust'," Associated Press, March 27, 2007]

[This investigation comes to the conclusion that the war has, directly or indirectly, killed around 1 million people in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan, i.e. a total of around 1.3 million. Not included in this figure are further war zones such as Yemen. The figure is approximately 10 times greater than that of which the public, experts and decision makers are aware of and propagated by the media and major NGOs. And this is only a conservative estimate. The total number of deaths in the three countries named above could also be in excess of 2 million, whereas a figure below 1 million is extremely unlikely.--"Body Count," Physicians for Social Responsibility, March 2015]

Muslim Casualties in U.S.-Led War on Terror, The Wisdom Fund, August 3, 2015