Iraq Mortality - Articles, Interviews, Media Alerts

Co-Author of Medical Study Estimating 650,000 Iraqi Deaths Defends Research in the Face of White House Dismissal

Thu, 12 Oct 2006 07:15:04 -0500

Co-Author of Medical Study Estimating 650,000 Iraqi Deaths Defends Research in the Face of White House Dismissal

Thursday, October 12th, 2006

The White House is dismissing the findings of a medical study that says 650,000 people have died in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion. The study was conducted by American and Iraqi researchers and published in the prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet. We’re joined by the report’s co-author, epidemiologist Les Roberts. [includes rush transcript]

More than 650,000 people have died in Iraq since the U.S. led invasion of the country began in March of 2003. This is according to a new study published in the scientific journal, The Lancet. The study was conducted by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Al Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. Researchers based their findings on interviews with a random sampling of households taken in clusters across Iraq. The study is an update to a prior one compiled by many of the same researchers. That study estimated that around 100,000 Iraqis died in the first 18 months after the invasion.

Iraqi Dead May Total 600,000, Study Says

Wed, 11 Oct 2006 01:26:12 -0500

October 11, 2006
By SABRINA TAVERNISE and DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.
New York Times

BAGHDAD, Oct. 10 — A team of American and Iraqi public health researchers has estimated that 600,000 civilians have died in violence across Iraq since the 2003 American invasion, the highest estimate ever for the toll of the war here.

Study Shows Civilian Death Toll in Iraq More Than 100,000

Thu, 15 Dec 2005 16:14:48 -0600

...I’m even more struck that here a year after our study came out, the first time the President has been asked about this was not by a reporter, but by someone from the public when he took a question.
-Les Roberts

On the 1,000th day of the U.S. war on Iraq, we look at a subject that usually receives little attention -- the Iraqi civilian death toll since the war began. We speak with Dr. Les Roberts, the lead researcher of a study released last year on the number of deaths in Iraq, which put the toll at more than 100,000. [includes rush transcript] President Bush was asked about the Iraqi civilian death toll on Monday following his speech at the Philadelphia World Affairs Council.

Q: Since the inception of the Iraqi war, I'd like to know the approximate total of Iraqis who have been killed. And by Iraqis I include civilians, military, police, insurgents, translators.

THE PRESIDENT: How many Iraqi citizens have died in this war? I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis. We've lost about 2,140 of our own troops in Iraq.

Burying The Lancet - Update

Mon, 12 Sep 2005 00:32:35 -0500

Source: MEDIA LENS
September 12, 2005

In our Media Alert, Burying The Lancet - Parts 1 And 2 (September 5 and 6), we focused on the media response to a November 2004 report in The Lancet which estimated nearly 100,000 excess civilians deaths in Iraq since the March 2003 US-UK invasion.

Burying The Lancet - Part 2

Tue, 6 Sep 2005 00:11:04 -0500

Source: MEDIA LENS
September 6, 2005

Introduction

We learn some ugly truths when we compare the media response to Les Roberts' report on Iraq with the response to his earlier work in Congo.

In our analysis we found that in both the US and the British press, news reports initially presented the estimates of 100,000 deaths in Iraq and 1.7 million deaths in Congo without critical comment. The difference lies in the days, weeks and months that followed. Whereas the Congo figures and methodology were accepted without challenge, the Iraq figures and methodology were subjected to steady, withering criticism by both politicians and journalists (with rare defences in comment pieces by, for example, Seumas Milne and Terry Jones in the Guardian).

Burying The Lancet - Part 1

Mon, 5 Sep 2005 03:40:00 -0500

Source: MEDIA LENS
September 5, 2005

An Exchange Between The Independent's Mary Dejevsky And Lancet Author Les Roberts

"It is odd that the logic of epidemiology embraced by the press every day regarding new drugs or health risks somehow changes when the mechanism of death is their armed forces." (Les Roberts, Johns Hopkins School of Public Health)

Secrets of the Morgue: Baghdad's Body Count

Wed, 17 Aug 2005 04:24:55 -0500

Source: The Independent
by Robert Fisk
August 17, 2005

Bodies of 1,100 civilians brought to mortuary in July Pre-invasion, July figure was typically less than 200 Last Sunday alone, the mortuary received 36 bodies Up to 20 per cent of the bodies are never identified Many of the dead have been tortured or disfigured

The Baghdad morgue is a fearful place of heat and stench and mourning, the cries of relatives echoing down the narrow, foetid laneway behind the pale-yellow brick medical centre where the authorities keep their computerized records. So many corpses are being brought to the mortuary that human remains are stacked on top of each other. Unidentified bodies must be buried within days for lack of space - but the municipality is so overwhelmed by the number of killings that it can no longer provide the vehicles and personnel to take the remains to cemeteries.

The Lancet Study

Mon, 8 Aug 2005 02:44:12 -0500

Source: Znet Blog
by Noam Chomsky
August 8, 2005

It’s correct that the Lancet study, by far the most authoritative available, deliberately excluded Fallujah, because that would have raised the estimates much higher—recall that as in all scientific inquiries in related areas (technically, anywhere), this one is based on extrapolation from samples, and they wanted to err on the side of conservatism. For the same reason, they included Kurdish regions where there was very little conflict, thereby reducing the estimates.

New Calls for Coalition Forces to Count Iraqi Casualties

Fri, 29 Jul 2005 02:59:52 -0500

Source: OneWorld US
by Abid Aslam
July 29, 2005

WASHINGTON, D.C., Jul 28 (OneWorld) - At least 24,865 Iraqi civilians have died since the U.S.-led coalition began its war in their country but the real figure is unknown because coalition forces, flouting the Geneva Conventions, refuse to aid an accurate count, said a leading medical journal.

"The adamant refusal of the U.S.A. and its partner countries to keep count of Iraqi deaths is a stance that renders farcical the Geneva Conventions' principle that invading forces have a duty to make every effort to protect civilian lives," said an editorial in this week's issue of The Lancet, released late Thursday. "How can the coalition attest that it respects this obligation if it refuses to collect data to prove it?"

Almost 25,000 civilians killed in Iraq in two years: study

Tue, 19 Jul 2005 03:11:37 -0500

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.

New Study Raises Iraq Death Toll

Wed, 13 Jul 2005 05:55:48 -0500

Source: The Age
by Irwin Arieff
July 13, 2005

Nearly 40,000 Iraqis have been killed as a direct result of combat or armed violence since the US-led invasion. It is a figure considerably higher than previous estimates, a Swiss institute reported yesterday.

The public database Iraqi Body Count, by comparison, estimates that between 22,787 and 25,814 Iraqi civilians have died since the March 2003 invasion, based on reports from at least two media sources.

No official estimates of Iraqi casualties from the war have been issued, although military deaths in the US-led coalition forces are closely tracked and now total 1937.

Iraqi civilian casualties

Tue, 12 Jul 2005 02:54:48 -0500

Source: United Press International
July 12, 2005

An Iraqi humanitarian organization is reporting that 128,000 Iraqis have been killed since the U.S. invasion began in March 2003.

Mafkarat al-Islam reported that chairman of the 'Iraqiyun humanitarian organization in Baghdad, Dr. Hatim al-'Alwani, said that the toll includes everyone who has been killed since that time, adding that 55 percent of those killed have been women and children aged 12 and under.

'Iraqiyun obtained data from relatives and families of the deceased, as well as from Iraqi hospitals in all the country's provinces. The 128,000 figure only includes those whose relatives have been informed of their deaths and does not include those were abducted, assassinated or simply disappeared.

The number includes those who died during the U.S. assaults on al-Fallujah and al-Qa'im. 'Iraqiyun's figures conflict with the Iraqi Body Count public database compiled by Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies. According to the Graduate Institute of International Studies' database, 39,000 Iraqis have been killed as a direct result of combat or armed violence since March 2003. No official estimates of Iraqi casualties from the war have been issued by the Pentagon, which insists that it does not do "body counts." The Washington Post on July 12 reported that U.S. military deaths in Iraq now total 1,755.

Why Numbers Matter

Mon, 18 Apr 2005 02:29:29 -0500

Source: AlterNet
by Marla Ruzicka
April 18, 2005

Just before her death, Marla Ruzicka wrote about the importance of recording and publicly releasing Iraqi civilian casualty numbers.

BAGHDAD --The writer, a 28-year-old humanitarian aid worker from California, was killed Saturday in Baghdad when a suicide bomber aiming for a convoy of contractors pulled alongside her vehicle and detonated his explosives. Her longtime driver and translator, Faiz Ali Salim, also died. She filed this piece from Baghdad a week before her death.

In my two years in Iraq, the one question I am asked the most is: "How many Iraqi civilians have been killed by American forces?" The American public has a right to know how many Iraqis have lost their lives since the start of the war and as hostilities continue.

Iraq insurgency has killed 6,000 civilians

Tue, 5 Apr 2005 03:14:21 -0500

Source: Reuters
by Luke Baker
April 5, 2005

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Guerrillas and criminal gangs have killed 6,000 Iraqi civilians over the past two years and wounded 16,000, according to the first comprehensive government estimate of the toll from the insurgency.

"These people in the insurgency are involved in looting, terrorism, killing, kidnapping, drug dealing, beheading and all that," Human Rights Minister Bakhtiar Amin told Reuters on Tuesday.

"There are around 6,000 Iraqis who have been killed by these people and 16,000 who have been wounded," he said, citing figures compiled from records kept by the health, human rights, interior and other ministries.

Dead Iraqis: Why an Estimate was Ignored

Tue, 15 Mar 2005 03:11:42 -0600

Source: The Columbia Journalism Review
by Lila Guterman
March/April 2005

Last fall, a major public-health study appeared in The Lancet, a prestigious British medical journal, only to be missed or dismissed by the American press. To the extent it was covered at all, the reports were short and usually buried far from the front pages of major newspapers. The results of the study could have played an important role in future policy decisions, but the press’s near total silence allowed the issue to pass without debate.