Iraqi death toll may be 30 000

2005-10-25 22:14

Dubai - As America reached the grim milestone of 2 000 United States troops killed in Iraq, another figure looms far larger: the number of Iraqis who have died since the US-led invasion.

No one knows an exact number, but there is some consensus - including from a US military spokesperson and outside experts - that an independent count of roughly 30 000 is a relatively credible tally of Iraqi civilians killed.

An Associated Press count of war-related Iraqi deaths in the last six months found at least 3 836 Iraqi deaths in that period alone. More than two-thirds were civilians while the rest were Iraqi security personnel or insurgents.

Every day more attacks claim victims.

"We may never know the true number of the Iraqi public that has been killed or injured in this war," said the US military spokesperson in Baghdad, Lieutenant Colonel Steve Boylan. "The Iraqi public has taken the brunt of the casualties."

Daily deadly attacks

Overall, the estimates of Iraqis killed since the war's start vary widely, from 27 000 to 100 000 or more, although the higher figures are disputed.

Boylan said the US military keeps its own tally of Iraqi dead, but does not release it. He said he had asked US authorities to see the estimates of Iraqi dead himself, and has been refused.

But he said an estimate from Iraq Body Count, a British anti-war group that has compiled a death toll based on media reports, of between 26 690 and 30 051 Iraqi civilians killed - or roughly 1 000 per month in the 30 months since the war began - appeared credible.

While American troops are killed at the rate of about 60 to 70 per month, the new Iraqi military suffers that many deaths in a week, mainly from insurgent attacks that rose to around 90 per day in September, O'Hanlon said.

Exacerbating the carnage is the Iraqi crime rate, now the highest in the Middle East, with around 10 000 homicides a year that would not have happened without the invasion, he said.

Thus, the total of Iraqi deaths from all manner of war-related violence probably numbers between 40 000 and 70 000, said O'Hanlon, who teaches a course on estimating war casualties at Columbia University.

The Pentagon made it clear from the start of the Iraq invasion that it would not be counting Iraqi bodies, perhaps a reaction to the enduring embarrassment from its inflated Vietnam War body counts.

Human rights groups like Amnesty International have protested the Pentagon's decision, saying US forces are best equipped to count Iraqi dead.

Whatever the figure, the rate of killing appears to be growing.

"Most Iraqis remain less secure than they were under Saddam (Hussein), less secure even than they were in the first year of the American occupation," said James Dobbins, a former Bush administration envoy to Afghanistan and veteran diplomat who now directs the Rand Corporation's International Security and Defence Policy Centre.

Dobbins supplied figures from the Baghdad morgue that show 1 800 violent deaths in 2002, Saddam's last full year in power. That number jumped beyond 6 000 in 2003, the first year of the American occupation, and topped 8 000 last year.

- SAPA