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Govt tally: 87,215 Iraqis killed since '05
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-04-24 17:21 While the Pentagon maintains meticulous records of the number of American troops killed -- at least 4,276 as of Thursday -- 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, according to Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros, a US spokesman in Baghdad. The AP has filed Freedom of Information Act requests since 2005 seeking that data, but has not received it.
The US policy to not fully address civilian deaths has drawn heavy criticism from human rights groups. "We believe that all warring parties have a duty to keep information on casualties," said Sarah Leah Whitson of Human Rights Watch in New York. "It's one of many factors one needs to analyze compliance with international humanitarian law."
In 2003, AP journalists traveled across Iraq to search hospital records for civilian deaths during the first chaotic month of the invasion. They found that at least 3,240 civilians died that month, including 1,896 in Baghdad, but acknowledged that number was a fraction of the total because record-keeping often fell victim to the bloodshed. Beginning in May 2005, the AP has tracked war-related casualties as reported by police, hospital and government officials, mosque workers and verifiable witness accounts, breaking down the victims into civilians, soldiers and police. That tally has reached 46,065, including 37,205 civilians, but also underrepresents the true casualty number because many killings go unreported, especially in more remote areas.
There are other clues to the death toll, such as the number of people buried at the main Shiite cemetery in the holy city of Najaf. But even there, the deaths are limited mostly to Shiites and include natural as well as violent causes, so they cannot be considered definitive. The director of the cemetery's statistics office, Ammar al-Ithari, said the number of burials jumped from just over 32,000 in 2004 and 2005 to nearly 50,000 in 2006 and 54,000 in 2007. It fell to nearly 40,000 last year, as violence declined. There are no statistics from before the war because records were destroyed in the fighting. The Iraqi official who provided the Health Ministry figures expressed confidence in its count. He said local authorities consistently reported on violence throughout the war, and that the ministry accurately compiled their reports. He also defended death certificates as an instrument, because relatives need them to bury a body in most cemeteries, as well as for inheritance and compensation purposes. He acknowledged some slain insurgents could be included in the count but said he believed that number was low because few insurgents went to hospitals for treatment out of fear of detection, and many insurgent groups buried their own fighters without getting death certificates. Some experts say casualty tallies based on media reports are inaccurate, because too many deaths go unreported. Some 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. And whatever the number, the ultimate goal is to find ways to reduce it in future conflicts. "The loss of life among those caught up in conflict is tragic whatever the numbers reported," said Gilbert Burnham, one of authors of the Lancet survey. "And finding approaches which will reduce these deaths is of great importance."
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