World>Terrorism & Security
posted October 29, 2004, updated 12:00 p.m.

Report: 100,000 Iraqis killed since invasion

British medical journal says 'airstrikes major factor' in deaths.

by Tom Regan | csmonitor.com

American and Iraqi researchers, led by doctors from Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, write in the prestigious British medical journal, The Lancet, that more than 100,000 Iraqis have died since the US-led invasion of the country than would have died otherwise. These new figures are much higher than any previous estimates, which generally said that between 10,000, and 37,000 Iraqis died directly or indirectly as a result of the March 2003 invasion.

The Times of London reports Friday that the survey attributes most of the extra deaths, many of whom were women and children, to " airstrikes by coalition forces." The BBC reports that a skeptical British Foreign Minister Jack Straw says his government will " study with very great care" the claims that so many Iraqis have died as a result of the coalition invasion.

'Because it is in the Lancet, it is obviously something we have to look at in a very serious way. It is, however, an estimate that is based on very different methodology from standard methodology for assessing causalities, namely on the number of people reported to have been killed at the time or around the time they were killed.'


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The report also took into account the possibility that intense violence in some areas, such as Fallujah, may have affected the overall numbers. But, the Associated Press reports, even when they excluded the statistics from Fallujah, the survey "indicates that the death toll associated with the invasion and occupation of Iraq is more likely than not about 100,000 people, and may be much higher." The chances of a violent death were 58 times higher after the invasion than before it, the researchers said.

To conduct the survey, investigators visited 33 neighborhoods spread evenly across the country in September, randomly selecting clusters of 30 households to sample. Of the 988 households visited, 808, consisting of 7,868 people, agreed to participate. Each household was asked how many people lived in the home and how many births and deaths there had been since January 2002. The scientists then compared death rates in the 15 months before the invasion with those that occurred during the 18 months after the attack and adjusted those numbers to account for the different time periods.

The Guardian reports the study showed very little violence committed by individual soldiers on the ground. It was largely the use of airpower and rocketry that caused most civilian deaths.

The International Herald Tribune reports that the Lancet's editors decided to publish the results of the study on its website a week before the normal publication date so that the figures could circulate and be discussed before the US election next Tuesday. "We were shocked at the magnitude but we're quite sure that the estimate of 100,000 is a conservative estimate," said Dr. Gilbert Burnham of the Johns Hopkins study team.

Lancet editor Richard Horton said: 'Democratic imperialism has led to more deaths, not fewer. This political and military failure continues to cause scores of casualties among non-combatants.' He urged the coalition forces to rethink their strategy to 'prevent further unnecessary human casualties.'

The New York Times reports that the high figure is sure to be greeted with skepticism by many people. But others say they are not surprised at all.

'I am emotionally shocked, but I have no trouble in believing that this many people have been killed,' said Scott Lipscomb, an associate professor at Northwestern University, who works on the www.iraqbodycount.net project. That project, which collates only deaths reported in the news media, currently put the maximum civilian death toll at just under 17,000. 'We've always maintained that the actual count must be much higher,' Lipscomb said.

TechStationCentral, a conservative weblog written by Phiilip Glassman, questioned the rationale of rushing the report out to the public so few days before an election. He said the report was little more than an attempt to discredit President Bush.

A major story if true. One does not have to be a partisan Democrat to "question the timing" of an announcement; indeed one does not even have to be a potential voter in the US elections next week to think that there is something a little, um, odd, about the timing of this paper.

Also, in another Iraq story that has created huge controversy in the days leading up to the US election, ABCNews.com reports 380 metric tonnes of explosives that went missing from Iraq's Al Qaqaa weapons facility were still present after the US-led invasion. The US TV network says it has a video, shot by a Minnesota television station news crew embedded with the US Army's 101st Airborne Division, shot on location at Al Qaqaa nine days after the fall of Baghdad which shows US soldiers inspecting the facility with the explosives still in place.

Bloomberg News reports that US soldiers are "shown breaking into a bunker and then looking into crates and barrels marked 'explosive' on the tape from KSTP, a station in St. Paul, Minnesota."

ABCNews.com says the tape suggests that the US military opened the sealed bunkers and then left them unguarded as the unit involved moved on to Baghad. Pentagon spokesman Larry DiRita said it's not clear what the photos indicate.

Meanwhile, Fox News reports that a US Army officer came forward Friday and said a team from the 3rd Infantry Division took about 200 tons of explosives from Al-Qaqaa munitions base soon after Saddam Hussein's regime fell last year. He didn't know that the International Atomic Energy Commission had reported 380 tonnes of explosives were missing until this past week. If proven to be true, that would leave about 180 tonnes of explosives missing without an explanation.