25,000 Iraqi civilians killed so far due to US invassion of Iraq
Iraq-USA, Politics, 7/20/2005

The US lead invasion of Iraq in 2003 has lead to a minimum of 24,865 Iraqi civilians being killed, a new report said. Women and children accounted for almost 20% of this number. At least 42,500 civilians were reported wounded.

The report "A Dossier on Civilian Casualties in Iraq, 2003-2005" is the first public detailed account of all non-combatants reported killed or wounded during the first two years of the continuing conflict. The report, published by "Iraq Body Count" in association with "Oxford Research Group," is based on comprehensive analysis of over 10,000 media reports published between March 2003 and March 2005, Iraq Body Count said.

The UK, which was a partner of the US in the invasion of Iraq, and where the Oxford Research Group who collaborated on this report is based said that these death numbers are conservative.

A previous report by a UK Lancet organization had previously estimated a much higher number of civilian death in Iraq saying it was near 100,000.

Asked about the difference, Oxford Research Group told ArabicNews.com that the Lancet study used epidemiological method which were based on interviews with a sample of Iraqi households and other confirmations, and that from that data, they extrapolated using statistical standard medical methods about the possible number of civilian deaths, and put a range of potential number of death at 100,000, saying that the Lancet report acknowledged that there was a margin of error for that report because it was based on statistical methods.

However, Oxford Research Group said that this study is based on actual reported death by the news organizations. These numbers of civilian deaths in the report are conservative Oxford Research Group said because each reported death had to be corroborated by a minimum of three other media reports for the same death in order to be included the death count database.


The report said US-led forces killed 37% of civilian victims. Anti-occupation forces/insurgents killed 9% of civilian victims. Post-invasion criminal violence accounted for 36% of all deaths. Killings by anti-occupation forces, crime and unknown agents have shown a steady rise over the entire period.

The figures do not include killed persons from the former Iraqi army or the gunmen because no confidential statistics, official or non official are provided.

The Oxford Research Group told ArabicNews.com that these 25000 civilian deaths are "significantly" bellow what the real number must be because the report is "conservative" in its method of counting the number of death where each death needs to be reported by journalists to be counted.

Both the American army and the Iraqi government opposed the results of the report. The spokesman for the American army in Iraq said that his forces does not target the civilians, while the Iraqi government considered that the report made a mistake in remarking that the killing of the armed attacks is less than what was killed by the coalition forces. The result of the report reflects almost the same copy of a survey study results financed by the UN in 2004, monitoring that 24,000 persons were killed since the invasion which was led by the USA.

The report and the research on Iraq's death causalities was initiated by Iraq Body Count.

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