Source: Agence France-Presse
July 19, 2005

LONDON, July 19 (AFP) - Almost 25,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since US and British troops invaded the country two years ago, an average of 34 every single day, a British study said on Tuesday.

More of the deaths overall have been caused by the actions of foreign troops than insurgents within the country, the study by Iraq Body Count and the Oxford Research Group said. However, the report stresses that the vast majority of civilian deaths caused by US and British troops took place in the weeks following the start of war in March 2003, while currently far more deaths occur due to insurgency.

The estimate of 24,865 deaths over the two-year period to March this year is considerably lower than a number of 98,000 suggested in a study published last October by British-based medical journal The Lancet.

Nonetheless, the new report focuses attention on the suffering of Iraq's civilians, following a recent spate of suicide bombings which have killed more than 100 people in the past few days.

The report, "A Dossier on Civilian Casualties in Iraq 2003-2005", by a team led by John Sloboda from Britain's Keele University, analysed more than 10,000 media reports, many from Iraqi journalists and sourced from mortuary officials and medical staff.

In contrast, the study by The Lancet was based on a sample of 988 households in 33 randomly-selected neighbourhoods in Iraq, with the figures extrapolated for the whole country.

The new report attributes 37 percent of civilian deaths to foreign forces and nine percent to insurgents targeting occupying troops or Iraqi government agencies such as police.

However, a further 11 percent of deaths are recorded as the responsibility of "unknown agents" -- meaning suicide bombs and other attacks not directly aimed at foreign or official Iraqi targets but possibly still intended to destabilise society.

The report also highlights "extraordinary" levels of criminal violence, recording almost 9,000 deaths -- more than a third of the total -- not directly related to the occupation and insurgency.

These fatalities, recorded by Iraqi morgues, include people killed in robberies and kidnappings and battles between criminal gangs.

The figures say that 30 percent of the total casualties happened during the US-led, British-backed invasion, a total of 7,088 people, of whom 6,882 died as a result of foreign military action.

After the invasion had ended, almost twice as many civilians died in the second year of the occupation as the first -- 11,351 against 6,215 -- as the insurgency increased and US troops targeted militants in the city of Fallujah.

Despite the media profile given to suicide blasts, just 7.7 percent of the civilian deaths were caused by vehicle bombs, just over half of which were suicide bombs.

More than three-quarters of the civilian deaths occurred in 12 of Iraq's biggest cities and towns, with almost half of the total in Baghdad.

"The ever-mounting Iraqi death toll is the forgotten cost of the decision to go to war in Iraq," Sloboda said on Tuesday at the launch of the report.

"Our data show that no sector of Iraqi society has escaped. We sincerely hope that this research will help to inform decision-makers around the world about the real needs of the Iraqi people as they struggle to rebuild their country."

Sloboda stressed that his report did not necessarily contradict the study in The Lancet, which also included non-violent deaths said to be caused by the war.

The new figures were simply meant to be "an absolutely firm, unshakeable baseline" for the minimum number of violent deaths, he said.

pw/tm AFP 191230 GMT 07 05

Copyright (c) 2005 Agence France-Presse Received by NewsEdge Insight: 07/19/2005 08:32:02