Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 14:47, 6 November 2006

This article documents a current event. Information may change rapidly as the event progresses, and initial news reports may be unreliable. The latest updates to this article may not reflect the most current information. Feel free to improve this article or discuss changes on the talk page, but please note that updates without valid and reliable references will be removed. (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Casualties of the conflicts in Iraq since 2003 (beginning with the 2003 invasion of Iraq and continuing with the ensuing 2003 occupation of Iraq coalition presence as well as the activities of the various armed groups operating in the country) have come in many forms, and the accuracy of the information available on different types of casualties varies greatly.

For troops in the U.S.-led Multinational coalition, the death toll is carefully tracked and updated daily, and the names and photographs of those killed in action as well as in accidents have been published widely. Regarding the Iraqis, however, information on both military and civilian casualties is both less accurate and less reliable, and given the political significance of these figures and the varied agendas of all parties, no source can be considered free of bias. Estimates of casualty levels are available from reporters on the scene, from officials of involved organizations, and from groups that summarize information on incidents reported in the news media.

The word "casualties" in its most general sense includes the injured as well as the dead. Accounts of the number of coalition wounded vary widely, partly because it is not obvious what should be counted: should only those injuries serious enough to put a soldier out of commission be included? Do illnesses or injuries caused by accidents count, or should the focus be restricted to wounds caused by hostile engagement? Sources using different definitions may arrive at very different numbers, and sometimes the precise definition is not clearly specified. As for the Iraqis, where even the death toll has only been very roughly estimated, it appears that no one has attempted to count the wounded.

Overview

This article documents a current event. Information may change rapidly as the event progresses, and initial news reports may be unreliable. The latest updates to this article may not reflect the most current information. Feel free to improve this article or discuss changes on the talk page, but please note that updates without valid and reliable references will be removed. (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Casualties of the conflicts in Iraq since 2003 (beginning with the 2003 invasion of Iraq and continuing with the ensuing 2003 occupation of Iraq coalition presence as well as the activities of the various armed groups operating in the country) have come in many forms, and the accuracy of the information available on different types of casualties varies greatly.

For troops in the U.S.-led Multinational coalition, the death toll is carefully tracked and updated daily, and the names and photographs of those killed in action as well as in accidents have been published widely. Regarding the Iraqis, however, information on both military and civilian casualties is both less accurate and less reliable, and given the political significance of these figures and the varied agendas of all parties, no source can be considered free of bias. Estimates of casualty levels are available from reporters on the scene, from officials of involved organizations, and from groups that summarize information on incidents reported in the news media.

The word "casualties" in its most general sense includes the injured as well as the dead. Accounts of the number of coalition wounded vary widely, partly because it is not obvious what should be counted: should only those injuries serious enough to put a soldier out of commission be included? Do illnesses or injuries caused by accidents count, or should the focus be restricted to wounds caused by hostile engagement? Sources using different definitions may arrive at very different numbers, and sometimes the precise definition is not clearly specified. As for the Iraqis, where even the death toll has only been very roughly estimated, it appears that no one has attempted to count the wounded.

Overview

Template loop detected: Template:Summary of casualties of the 2003 invasion of Iraq

Detailed statistics

• Iraqis:
  • Total:
    • As of July, 2006, there have been 654,965 (95% CI 392,979 to 942,636) excess Iraqi deaths as a consequence of the war, which corresponds to 2.5% of the population.
  • Civilians:
    • According to the Iraq Body Count project 44,661 - 49,610 Iraqi civilians had been reported killed in war-related violence as of 24 October 2006
• Coalition (figures as of 28 October 2006 if not otherwise dated):
  • Military:
    • 3,050 as of 28 October 2006 at a rate of 2.3 per day. These are total coalition casualties not counting Iraqi ally soldiers or Iraqi police.)
      • 2,811 U.S.
      • 120 UK
      • 120 from all other coalition countries (not including Iraq)
      • Iraqi allied soldiers: number unknown. At least 2,516.
      • 3,699 Iraqi policemen
  • Civilians:
    • at least 335 private security personnel (as of 8 October 2006)
    • more than 150 UN personnel/foreign civilians
    • more than 30 journalists
• Insurgents
  • Killed: 7,251 as of 2 October 2006
    • 863 were suicide bombers
  • Captured: 12,688 as of 31 August 2006
• Deadliest single insurgent attack:
  • Car bomb - Hilla, Iraq (60 miles south of Baghdad) February 28, 2005
    • 125 killed, 150 wounded

• Journalists
  • According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 45 journalists and 20 media support workers have been killed while covering the war in Iraq.

• 21,266 U.S. military as of 21 October 2006 at a rate of 15.85 wounded per day
  • 9,603 too badly injured to return to duty within 72 hours
• As of 11 March 2006, the United States Army estimated that 355 American troops had to have limbs amputated, and more than 1,700 troops suffered brain injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan.

)

• U.S. military: number unknown. The Pentagon reports that more than 1 in 4 returning U.S. soldiers have health problems that require medical or mental health treatment.
• UK military: 2,703 (as of October 4, 2004; includes troops wounded in action)
• Iraqi combatants: number unknown
• Iraqi civilians: At least 42,500 civilians reported wounded between 2003-2005.

Iraqi military casualties

Although there are no accurate counts of dead Iraqi soldiers, and U.S. Central Command has made few statements on the subject, U.S. General Tommy Franks reportedly estimated soon after the invasion that there had been 30,000 Iraqi troops killed as of April 9, 2003. (He later said "we don't do body counts.") Officials did estimate that 2,000-3,000 Iraqi troops were killed in one day alone during a blitz into Baghdad on April 5, 2003, suggesting that a total in the tens of thousands is not unlikely for the entire six-week period of major combat. (Following that period, the Iraqi military was effectively disbanded.)

In late May 2003, one reporter for The Guardian estimated that between 13,500 and 45,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed by American and British troops during six weeks of war.

A later, more frequently quoted study published in October, 2003 estimated that there were between 4,895 and 6,370 Iraqi military deaths.

The study explained that to arrive at this number, they had adjusted the underlying incident reports from the field by reducing each count by anywhere from 20% to 60%, based on their own reliability assessments, in order to "control for casualty inflation — a prevalent form of bias." Thus, the actual reports they were summarizing totalled between 6,119 and 15,925 deaths.

Civilian casualties

Iraqi civilians have suffered the bulk of fatalities in this conflict. Estimates of the number of civilian deaths are better documented than the estimates of Iraqi military casualties, but they still reveal significant uncertainty.

One study done by public health experts from Johns Hopkins University and published on 29 October 2004 in the Lancet medical journal, estimated that 100,000 "excess" Iraqi deaths from all causes had occurred since the US invasion began. The study did not attempt to measure how many of these were civilian, but the study's authors have said they believe that the "vast majority" were noncombatants, based on 7% of the casualties being women and 46% being children under the age of 15 (including Falluja data). To arrive at these excess death figures, a survey was taken from nearly 1000 Iraqi households in 33 clusters throughout Iraq, in which the residents were asked how many people lived there and how many births and deaths there had been since the war began. They then compared the death rate with the average from the 15 months before the war. Iraqis were found to be 1.5 times more likely to die from all causes after the invasion (rising from 0.5% to 0.79% per year) than in the 15 months preceding the war, producing an estimate of 98,000 excess deaths. This figure excluded data from one cluster in Falluja, which was deemed too much of an outlier for inclusion in the national estimate. If including data from Falluja, which showed a higher rate of violent deaths than the other 32 clusters combined, the increased death rate would be raised from 1.5 to 2.5 fold, violent deaths would be 58 times more likely with most of them due to air-strikes by coalition forces, and an additional 200,000 fatalities would be estimated.

Another study was commissioned by the United Nations Development Program, called the Iraq Living Conditions Survey, which sampled almost 22,000 households across all Iraqi provinces. It estimated 24,000 war-related violent deaths by May 2004 (with a 95 percent confidence interval from 18,000 to 29,000). This study also did not attempt to measure what portion of its estimate was made up of civilians. It would include Iraqi military killed during the invasion, as well as "insurgents" or other fighters thereafter.

An independent UK/US group, the Iraq Body Count project, compiles reported Iraqi civilian deaths resulting from the invasion and occupation, including those caused directly by coalition military action, those caused directly by the Iraqi insurgency, and those resulting from excess crime (the Iraqi Body Count project claims that the Occupying Authority is responsible to prevent these deaths under international law.) It shows a minimum of 43,269 and a maximum of 48,046 as of September 19, 2006. These figures include individual incident reports as well as hospital and morgue statistics that have been reported by at least two sources in the press. The website released a report detailing the civilian deaths it had recorded between 2003 and 2005. The report says the US and its allies were responsible for the largest share (37%) of the 24,865 deaths. The remaining deaths were attributed to anti-occupations forces (9%), crime (36%) and unknown agents (11%). See Iraq Body Count project.

Another study by an Iraqi political party, the "People's Kifah, or Struggle Against Hegemony," reported the findings of a survey it conducted between March and June of 2003 throughout the non-Kurdish areas of Iraq. They tallied 36,533 civilians killed in those areas by June 2003. Information on this study was first published on the website of retired Wall Street Journal reporter Jude Wanniski in August of 2003. While detailed town-by-town totals are given by the PK spokesperson, details of methodology are very thin and raw data is not in the public domain. A still less detailed report on this study appeared some months later in Al Jazeerah. The Al Jazeera report claims the study covered up to October 2003, but this can not be accurate, as the exact same figures were already published on the Wanniski website in August of 2003.

(Note that both groups above define the word civilian to exclude the various paramilitary forces operating in Iraq as well as the official military forces that existed under Saddam Hussein's regime.)

In June 2006, the Los Angeles Times released a report on death figures compiled by Iraqi officials from the records of the Baghdad Morgue, the Iraqi Health Ministry and other official agencies in Iraq, which concluded that the "War's Iraqi Death Toll Tops 50,000". The report said the count was "mostly of civilians" but also included security forces and insurgents. It added that, "Many more Iraqis are believed to have been killed but not counted because of serious lapses in recording deaths in the chaotic first year after the invasion, when there was no functioning Iraqi government, and continued spotty reporting nationwide since."

As for the major combat phase of the war from March–April 2003, Abu Dhabi TV reported on April 8, 2003 that Iraqi sources had claimed that 1,252 civilians had been killed and 5,103 had been wounded. The Iraq Body Count project, incorporating subsequent reports, has reported that by the end of the major combat phase up to April 30, 2003, 7,299 civilians had been killed, primarily by US air and ground forces.

Casualties caused by terrorist groups and criminals

In 2004, the Associated Press completed a survey of the morgues in Baghdad and surrounding provinces, to tally violent deaths since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations. In Baghdad alone, they counted 4,279 such deaths in a city of 5.6 million; these deaths generally do not include combatants, because they are typically not brought to morgues. This death rate translates to 76 killings per 100,000 people, compared to 39 in crime-ridden Bogotá, Colombia, 7.5 in New York City, 3.0 in Baghdad itself in 2002 (the year before the war), and the international average rate of 5.5.

Morgues surveyed in other parts of Iraq also reported large increases in the homicide rate. For example, the rate in the province of Karbala, south of Baghdad, rose from an average of one homicide per month in 2002 to an average of 55 per month in the year following the invasion; in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, where there were no homicides in 2002, the rate had grown to an average of 17 per month; in the northern province of Kirkuk, the rate had increased from 3 per month in 2002 to 34 per month in the survey period.

Non-Iraqi civilian casualties

Many non-combatants from both coalition and non-coalition countries have also been killed or wounded, including more than 60 journalists and more than 150 international aid personnel and foreign civilians.

Some of the 18-20,000 private military contractors and armed guards in Iraq, many of them working for the U.S. Department of Defense, have also died, though their status as civilian is controversial. As of October 9, 2005, some 273 foreign private military contractors are known to have been killed. These include security contractors, truck drivers, construction workers, and businessmen. The contractors came from the USA, European coalition members, and non coalition countries like South Africa and Germany. However, the nation with the largest number of contractor deaths is the United States, with at least 127 killed.

In addition, although reporting on this situation has been quite sparse, one article reported that at least 80 such contractors recruited to work in Iraq for American companies were killed during a period of eight days in early April 2004 — more than the roughly 70 coalition troops who were killed in the same period.

Excess Mortality Study

A study published in The Lancet on 29 October 2004 contains the following Summary:

Background: In March, 2003, military forces, mainly from the USA and the UK, invaded Iraq. We did a survey to compare mortality during the period of 14.6 months before the invasion with the 17.8 months after it.

Methods: A cluster sample survey was undertaken throughout Iraq during September, 2004. 33 clusters of 30 households each were interviewed about household composition, births, and deaths since January, 2002. In those households reporting deaths, the date, cause, and circumstances of violent deaths were recorded. We assessed the relative risk of death associated with the 2003 invasion and occupation by comparing mortality in the 17.8 months after the invasion with the 14.6-month period preceding it.

Findings: The risk of death was estimated to be 2.5-fold (95% CI 1.6-4.2) higher after the invasion when compared with the preinvasion period. Two-thirds of all violent deaths were reported in one cluster in the city of Falluja. If we exclude the Falluja data, the risk of death is 1.5-fold (1.1-2.3) higher after the invasion. We estimate that 98,000 more deaths than expected (8000-194,000) happened after the invasion outside of Falluja and far more if the outlier Falluja cluster is included. The major causes of death before the invasion were myocardial infarction, cerebrovascular accidents, and other chronic disorders whereas after the invasion violence was the primary cause of death. Violent deaths were widespread, reported in 15 of 33 clusters, and were mainly attributed to coalition forces. Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were men. The risk of death from violence in the period after the invasion was 58 times higher (95% CI 8.1-419) than in the period before the war.

Interpretation: Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths. We have shown that collection of public-health information is possible even during periods of extreme violence. Our results need further verification and should lead to changes to reduce noncombatant deaths from air strikes.

See Lancet study for more details of the methodology and subsequent controversy about the study.

Coalition military casualties

Casualties among the coalition military forces have been tracked with greater accuracy.

As of 28 October, 2006, the coalition death toll in this conflict was 3,050. Of these, 2,811 Americans, 120 British, 32 Italians, 18 Ukrainians, 17 Polish, 13 Bulgarians, 11 Spanish, 6 Danish, 5 Salvadoran, 3 Slovaks, 2 Australians, 2 Dutch, 2 Estonian, 2 Romanians, 2 Thai, 1 Fijian, 1 Hungarian, 1 Kazakh, and 1 Latvian have died. Over 94% of these died after President Bush's announcement on May 1, 2003 that major combat was over (see Mission Accomplished).

Troops killed in action account for 2,401 of the coalition casualties, including 2,225 of the U.S. casualties.

Since the official handover of power to the Iraq interim government on June 28, 2004, coalition soldiers have continued to come under attack in towns across Iraq.

Coalition casualties in the 2003–2006 conflict are now eight times those of the 1990–1991 Gulf War. (In the Gulf War, coalition forces suffered around 378 deaths, and among the Iraqi military, tens of thousands were killed, along with thousands of civilians.) As a result of the second Iraq war and War in Afghanistan, the total US annual military casualty rate has tripled and returned to its 1989 rate of approximately 1700 casualties per year.

Troops fallen ill, injured, or wounded

The total number of non-fatal coalition casualties of all kinds has never been comprehensively reported. Statistics on U.S. soldiers wounded in action, however, are disclosed regularly: according to the Pentagon, 21,266 have been wounded in action through 28 October 2006, of whom 9,603 were wounded severely enough that they could not return to action within 72 hours.

Many U.S. veterans of the Iraq War have reported a range of serious health issues, including tumors, daily blood in urine and stool, sexual dysfunction, migranes, frequent muscle spasms, and other symptoms similar to the debilitating symptoms of "Gulf War Syndrome" reported by many veterans of the 1991 Gulf War, which some believe is related to the United States' use of radioactive depleted uranium .

In addition, the study on posttraumatic stress disorder found that the percentage of troops suffering from PTSD increased by between 7-10% after deployment to Iraq, which would represent 25,000 to 35,000 initial periodcases of PTSD among the roughly 350,000 U.S. troops who have served in Iraq.

Information on injuries suffered by troops of other coalition countries is less readily available, but a statement in Hansard indicated that 2,703 UK soldiers had been medically evacuated from Iraq for wounds or injuries as of October 4, 2004 and that 155 UK troops were wounded in combat in the initial invasion .

Nightline controversy

Ted Koppel, host of ABC's Nightline, devoted his entire show on April 30, 2004, to reading the names of 721 of the 737 U.S. troops who had died thus far. He did not mention deaths in Afghanistan. (The show hadn't been able to confirm the remaining 16 names.)

Claiming that this would constitute a political statement, the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a media company whose executives have strongly supported President Bush, took the unusual action of barring the seven ABC-affiliated stations it controls from airing the show. The decision to censor the broadcast drew criticism from both sides, including members of the armed forces, opponents of the war, MoveOn.org, and most notably Republican Senator John McCain, who denounced the move as "unpatriotic" and "a gross disservice to the public"

References

1. "Iraq Body Count". Retrieved 2006-10-21.
2. "Coalition Casualty Count: Metrics". Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. Retrieved 2006-08-10.
3. ^ "Iraq Coalition Casualties". Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. Retrieved 2006-32-10. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
4. ^ "Contractor Deaths". Iraq Coalition Casualties. Retrieved 2006-08-10.
5. "Iraq suicide bomb kills at least 125". CNN. 2005-02-28. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
6. Wingert, Pat and Thomas, Evan (2006-03-20). "Iraq War Doctor: On Call in Hell". Newsweek. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
7. Zoroya, Gregg (2005-10-18). "1 in 4 Iraq vets ailing on return". USA Today. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
8. ^ "A Dossier of Civilian Casualties in Iraq: 2003 - 2005". Iraqbodycount.org. Retrieved 2006-08-09.
9. "Secretary of Defense Interview with Bob Woodward - 23 Oct, 2003". United States Department of Defense: News Transcript. 2004-04-19. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
10. Steele, Jonathan (2003-05-28). "Body counts". The Guardian. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
11. Conetta, Carl (20 October 2003). "The Wages of War: Iraqi Combatant and Noncombatant Fatalities in the 2003 Conflict". Project on Defense Alternatives Research Monograph #8. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
12. "Study puts Iraqi toll at 100,000". CNN. 2004-10-29. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
13. "Iraq Living Conditions Survey 2004". United Nations Development Programme. Retrieved 2006-08-09.
14. Wanniski, Jude (August 21, 2003). "Civilian War Deaths in Iraq". Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
15. Janabi, Ahmed (2004-07-31). "Iraqi group: Civilian toll over 37,000". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
16. Roug, Louise and Smith, Doug (2006-06-25). "War's Iraqi Death Toll Tops 50,000". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
17. ^ Cooney, Daniel (2004-05-23). "5,500 Iraqis Killed, Morgue Records Show". Associated Press. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
18. Barstow, David (2004-04-19). "Security Companies: Shadow Soldiers in Iraq". New York Times. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
19. Cambanis, Thanassis and Glain, Stephen (2004-04-02). "As insurgent attacks increase, so do contractors' costs". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
20. Fisk, Robert and Cockburn, Patrick (2004-04-13). "Deaths of scores of mercenaries hidden from view". The Star. Retrieved 2006-08-07. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
21. http://image.thelancet.com/extras/04art10342web.pdf
22. http://web1.whs.osd.mil/mmid/casualty/Death_Rates.pdf
23. "Is an Armament Sickening U.S. Soldiers?". Associated Press. 2006-08-12. Retrieved 2006-09-08.
24. "Combat Duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mental Health Problems, and Barriers to Care". The New England Journal of Medicine.
25. "House of Commons Hansard Written Answers for 4 Oct 2004". The United Kingdom Parliament.

See also

• United States casualties of war
• Posttraumatic stress disorder
• Suicide bombings in Iraq since 2003
• Lancet surveys of mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq
• Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict
• Iraq Body Count project

External links and references

U.S. military casualties only

• "Faces of the Fallen", Washington Post database of all U.S. service-member casualties from Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF)
• Statistical Summary: America's Major Wars (does not include Iraq War), cwc.lsu.edu
• "A Look At Those Who Died in Iraq", New York Times interactive
• U.S. Military Casualties, United States Department of Defense
• Timeline: US losses in Iraq since 1 May 2003, BBC News, last updated 5 May 2004
• "Honor the Fallen", database of U.S. troops killed in OIF and OEF
• "US Military Personnel Wounded in Iraq & Afghanistan: A Running Log", last updated 18 December 2003
• "U.S. Military Deaths in Bush's Iraq Quagmire", chart
• U.S. deaths in Vietnam and Iraq, comparative graph of casualties from beginning of conflicts, www.lies.com
• U.S. Casualties in Iraq, globalsecurity.org

Coalition (including U.S. and contractors) casualties only

• "Iraq Coalition Body Count", detailed monthly statistics, icasualties.org
• U.S. & Coalition Casualties, CNN database
• An incomplete list of contractors and security personnel killed in Iraq, icasualties.org
• "Iraq War Coalition Fatalities", Flash graphic of Iraq map showing Coalition casualties over time with location, obleek.com

Iraqi casualties only

• Iraqi civilian death toll, from the Iraq Body Count project
• Les Roberts, Riyadh Lafta, Richard Garfield, Jamal Khudhairi and Gilbert Burnham, "Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey" (free registration required), The Lancet, 20 November 2004; 364:1857-1864
• Gilbert Burnham, Riyadh Lafta, Shannon Doocy, and Les Roberts, "Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey" (free registration required), The Lancet, published online 11 October 2006
• Les Roberts seminar at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, on 13 April 2005; uploaded in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5vD_Ub2K_c on 25 October 2006.

General and miscellaneous

• "Wage Peace Movie", 2-minute web movie about casualties in Iraq from the American Friends Service Committee
• "Eyes Wide Open", a travelling exhibition on the human cost of war
• "Casualties of the War in Iraq", link and news aggregator, purposeless.com
• "Iraq: Journalists in Danger - A statistical profile of journalists killed on duty since March 2003 in Iraq", Committee to Protect Journalists
• "Likely Humanitarian Scenarios", UN internal memo predicting 100,000 direct and 400,000 indirect casualties as a result of the invasion, 10 December 2002

Detailed statistics

• Iraqis:
  • Total:
    • As of July, 2006, there have been 654,965 (95% CI 392,979 to 942,636) excess Iraqi deaths as a consequence of the war, which corresponds to 2.5% of the population.
  • Civilians:
    • According to the Iraq Body Count project 44,661 - 49,610 Iraqi civilians had been reported killed in war-related violence as of 24 October 2006
• Coalition (figures as of 28 October 2006 if not otherwise dated):
  • Military:
    • 3,050 as of 28 October 2006 at a rate of 2.3 per day. These are total coalition casualties not counting Iraqi ally soldiers or Iraqi police.)
      • 2,811 U.S.
      • 120 UK
      • 120 from all other coalition countries (not including Iraq)
      • Iraqi allied soldiers: number unknown. At least 2,516.
      • 3,699 Iraqi policemen
  • Civilians:
    • at least 335 private security personnel (as of 8 October 2006)
    • more than 150 UN personnel/foreign civilians
    • more than 30 journalists
• Insurgents
  • Killed: 7,251 as of 2 October 2006
    • 863 were suicide bombers
  • Captured: 12,688 as of 31 August 2006
• Deadliest single insurgent attack:
  • Car bomb - Hilla, Iraq (60 miles south of Baghdad) February 28, 2005
    • 125 killed, 150 wounded

• Journalists
  • According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, at least 45 journalists and 20 media support workers have been killed while covering the war in Iraq.

• 21,266 U.S. military as of 21 October 2006 at a rate of 15.85 wounded per day
  • 9,603 too badly injured to return to duty within 72 hours
• As of 11 March 2006, the United States Army estimated that 355 American troops had to have limbs amputated, and more than 1,700 troops suffered brain injuries in Iraq and Afghanistan.

)

• U.S. military: number unknown. The Pentagon reports that more than 1 in 4 returning U.S. soldiers have health problems that require medical or mental health treatment.
• UK military: 2,703 (as of October 4, 2004; includes troops wounded in action)
• Iraqi combatants: number unknown
• Iraqi civilians: At least 42,500 civilians reported wounded between 2003-2005.

Iraqi military casualties

Although there are no accurate counts of dead Iraqi soldiers, and U.S. Central Command has made few statements on the subject, U.S. General Tommy Franks reportedly estimated soon after the invasion that there had been 30,000 Iraqi troops killed as of April 9, 2003. (He later said "we don't do body counts.") Officials did estimate that 2,000-3,000 Iraqi troops were killed in one day alone during a blitz into Baghdad on April 5, 2003, suggesting that a total in the tens of thousands is not unlikely for the entire six-week period of major combat. (Following that period, the Iraqi military was effectively disbanded.)

In late May 2003, one reporter for The Guardian estimated that between 13,500 and 45,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed by American and British troops during six weeks of war.

A later, more frequently quoted study published in October, 2003 estimated that there were between 4,895 and 6,370 Iraqi military deaths.

The study explained that to arrive at this number, they had adjusted the underlying incident reports from the field by reducing each count by anywhere from 20% to 60%, based on their own reliability assessments, in order to "control for casualty inflation — a prevalent form of bias." Thus, the actual reports they were summarizing totalled between 6,119 and 15,925 deaths.

Civilian casualties

Iraqi civilians have suffered the bulk of fatalities in this conflict. Estimates of the number of civilian deaths are better documented than the estimates of Iraqi military casualties, but they still reveal significant uncertainty.

One study done by public health experts from Johns Hopkins University and published on 29 October 2004 in the Lancet medical journal, estimated that 100,000 "excess" Iraqi deaths from all causes had occurred since the US invasion began. The study did not attempt to measure how many of these were civilian, but the study's authors have said they believe that the "vast majority" were noncombatants, based on 7% of the casualties being women and 46% being children under the age of 15 (including Falluja data). To arrive at these excess death figures, a survey was taken from nearly 1000 Iraqi households in 33 clusters throughout Iraq, in which the residents were asked how many people lived there and how many births and deaths there had been since the war began. They then compared the death rate with the average from the 15 months before the war. Iraqis were found to be 1.5 times more likely to die from all causes after the invasion (rising from 0.5% to 0.79% per year) than in the 15 months preceding the war, producing an estimate of 98,000 excess deaths. This figure excluded data from one cluster in Falluja, which was deemed too much of an outlier for inclusion in the national estimate. If including data from Falluja, which showed a higher rate of violent deaths than the other 32 clusters combined, the increased death rate would be raised from 1.5 to 2.5 fold, violent deaths would be 58 times more likely with most of them due to air-strikes by coalition forces, and an additional 200,000 fatalities would be estimated.

Another study was commissioned by the United Nations Development Program, called the Iraq Living Conditions Survey, which sampled almost 22,000 households across all Iraqi provinces. It estimated 24,000 war-related violent deaths by May 2004 (with a 95 percent confidence interval from 18,000 to 29,000). This study also did not attempt to measure what portion of its estimate was made up of civilians. It would include Iraqi military killed during the invasion, as well as "insurgents" or other fighters thereafter.

An independent UK/US group, the Iraq Body Count project, compiles reported Iraqi civilian deaths resulting from the invasion and occupation, including those caused directly by coalition military action, those caused directly by the Iraqi insurgency, and those resulting from excess crime (the Iraqi Body Count project claims that the Occupying Authority is responsible to prevent these deaths under international law.) It shows a minimum of 43,269 and a maximum of 48,046 as of September 19, 2006. These figures include individual incident reports as well as hospital and morgue statistics that have been reported by at least two sources in the press. The website released a report detailing the civilian deaths it had recorded between 2003 and 2005. The report says the US and its allies were responsible for the largest share (37%) of the 24,865 deaths. The remaining deaths were attributed to anti-occupations forces (9%), crime (36%) and unknown agents (11%). See Iraq Body Count project.

Another study by an Iraqi political party, the "People's Kifah, or Struggle Against Hegemony," reported the findings of a survey it conducted between March and June of 2003 throughout the non-Kurdish areas of Iraq. They tallied 36,533 civilians killed in those areas by June 2003. Information on this study was first published on the website of retired Wall Street Journal reporter Jude Wanniski in August of 2003. While detailed town-by-town totals are given by the PK spokesperson, details of methodology are very thin and raw data is not in the public domain. A still less detailed report on this study appeared some months later in Al Jazeerah. The Al Jazeera report claims the study covered up to October 2003, but this can not be accurate, as the exact same figures were already published on the Wanniski website in August of 2003.

(Note that both groups above define the word civilian to exclude the various paramilitary forces operating in Iraq as well as the official military forces that existed under Saddam Hussein's regime.)

In June 2006, the Los Angeles Times released a report on death figures compiled by Iraqi officials from the records of the Baghdad Morgue, the Iraqi Health Ministry and other official agencies in Iraq, which concluded that the "War's Iraqi Death Toll Tops 50,000". The report said the count was "mostly of civilians" but also included security forces and insurgents. It added that, "Many more Iraqis are believed to have been killed but not counted because of serious lapses in recording deaths in the chaotic first year after the invasion, when there was no functioning Iraqi government, and continued spotty reporting nationwide since."

As for the major combat phase of the war from March–April 2003, Abu Dhabi TV reported on April 8, 2003 that Iraqi sources had claimed that 1,252 civilians had been killed and 5,103 had been wounded. The Iraq Body Count project, incorporating subsequent reports, has reported that by the end of the major combat phase up to April 30, 2003, 7,299 civilians had been killed, primarily by US air and ground forces.

Casualties caused by terrorist groups and criminals

In 2004, the Associated Press completed a survey of the morgues in Baghdad and surrounding provinces, to tally violent deaths since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations. In Baghdad alone, they counted 4,279 such deaths in a city of 5.6 million; these deaths generally do not include combatants, because they are typically not brought to morgues. This death rate translates to 76 killings per 100,000 people, compared to 39 in crime-ridden Bogotá, Colombia, 7.5 in New York City, 3.0 in Baghdad itself in 2002 (the year before the war), and the international average rate of 5.5.

Morgues surveyed in other parts of Iraq also reported large increases in the homicide rate. For example, the rate in the province of Karbala, south of Baghdad, rose from an average of one homicide per month in 2002 to an average of 55 per month in the year following the invasion; in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, where there were no homicides in 2002, the rate had grown to an average of 17 per month; in the northern province of Kirkuk, the rate had increased from 3 per month in 2002 to 34 per month in the survey period.

Non-Iraqi civilian casualties

Many non-combatants from both coalition and non-coalition countries have also been killed or wounded, including more than 60 journalists and more than 150 international aid personnel and foreign civilians.

Some of the 18-20,000 private military contractors and armed guards in Iraq, many of them working for the U.S. Department of Defense, have also died, though their status as civilian is controversial. As of October 9, 2005, some 273 foreign private military contractors are known to have been killed. These include security contractors, truck drivers, construction workers, and businessmen. The contractors came from the USA, European coalition members, and non coalition countries like South Africa and Germany. However, the nation with the largest number of contractor deaths is the United States, with at least 127 killed.

In addition, although reporting on this situation has been quite sparse, one article reported that at least 80 such contractors recruited to work in Iraq for American companies were killed during a period of eight days in early April 2004 — more than the roughly 70 coalition troops who were killed in the same period.

Excess Mortality Study

A study published in The Lancet on 29 October 2004 contains the following Summary:

Background: In March, 2003, military forces, mainly from the USA and the UK, invaded Iraq. We did a survey to compare mortality during the period of 14.6 months before the invasion with the 17.8 months after it.

Methods: A cluster sample survey was undertaken throughout Iraq during September, 2004. 33 clusters of 30 households each were interviewed about household composition, births, and deaths since January, 2002. In those households reporting deaths, the date, cause, and circumstances of violent deaths were recorded. We assessed the relative risk of death associated with the 2003 invasion and occupation by comparing mortality in the 17.8 months after the invasion with the 14.6-month period preceding it.

Findings: The risk of death was estimated to be 2.5-fold (95% CI 1.6-4.2) higher after the invasion when compared with the preinvasion period. Two-thirds of all violent deaths were reported in one cluster in the city of Falluja. If we exclude the Falluja data, the risk of death is 1.5-fold (1.1-2.3) higher after the invasion. We estimate that 98,000 more deaths than expected (8000-194,000) happened after the invasion outside of Falluja and far more if the outlier Falluja cluster is included. The major causes of death before the invasion were myocardial infarction, cerebrovascular accidents, and other chronic disorders whereas after the invasion violence was the primary cause of death. Violent deaths were widespread, reported in 15 of 33 clusters, and were mainly attributed to coalition forces. Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were men. The risk of death from violence in the period after the invasion was 58 times higher (95% CI 8.1-419) than in the period before the war.

Interpretation: Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess deaths, or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths. We have shown that collection of public-health information is possible even during periods of extreme violence. Our results need further verification and should lead to changes to reduce noncombatant deaths from air strikes.

See Lancet study for more details of the methodology and subsequent controversy about the study.

Coalition military casualties

Casualties among the coalition military forces have been tracked with greater accuracy.

As of 28 October, 2006, the coalition death toll in this conflict was 3,050. Of these, 2,811 Americans, 120 British, 32 Italians, 18 Ukrainians, 17 Polish, 13 Bulgarians, 11 Spanish, 6 Danish, 5 Salvadoran, 3 Slovaks, 2 Australians, 2 Dutch, 2 Estonian, 2 Romanians, 2 Thai, 1 Fijian, 1 Hungarian, 1 Kazakh, and 1 Latvian have died. Over 94% of these died after President Bush's announcement on May 1, 2003 that major combat was over (see Mission Accomplished).

Troops killed in action account for 2,401 of the coalition casualties, including 2,225 of the U.S. casualties.

Since the official handover of power to the Iraq interim government on June 28, 2004, coalition soldiers have continued to come under attack in towns across Iraq.

Coalition casualties in the 2003–2006 conflict are now eight times those of the 1990–1991 Gulf War. (In the Gulf War, coalition forces suffered around 378 deaths, and among the Iraqi military, tens of thousands were killed, along with thousands of civilians.) As a result of the second Iraq war and War in Afghanistan, the total US annual military casualty rate has tripled and returned to its 1989 rate of approximately 1700 casualties per year.

Troops fallen ill, injured, or wounded

The total number of non-fatal coalition casualties of all kinds has never been comprehensively reported. Statistics on U.S. soldiers wounded in action, however, are disclosed regularly: according to the Pentagon, 21,266 have been wounded in action through 28 October 2006, of whom 9,603 were wounded severely enough that they could not return to action within 72 hours.

Many U.S. veterans of the Iraq War have reported a range of serious health issues, including tumors, daily blood in urine and stool, sexual dysfunction, migranes, frequent muscle spasms, and other symptoms similar to the debilitating symptoms of "Gulf War Syndrome" reported by many veterans of the 1991 Gulf War, which some believe is related to the United States' use of radioactive depleted uranium .

In addition, the study on posttraumatic stress disorder found that the percentage of troops suffering from PTSD increased by between 7-10% after deployment to Iraq, which would represent 25,000 to 35,000 initial periodcases of PTSD among the roughly 350,000 U.S. troops who have served in Iraq.

Information on injuries suffered by troops of other coalition countries is less readily available, but a statement in Hansard indicated that 2,703 UK soldiers had been medically evacuated from Iraq for wounds or injuries as of October 4, 2004 and that 155 UK troops were wounded in combat in the initial invasion .

Nightline controversy

Ted Koppel, host of ABC's Nightline, devoted his entire show on April 30, 2004, to reading the names of 721 of the 737 U.S. troops who had died thus far. He did not mention deaths in Afghanistan. (The show hadn't been able to confirm the remaining 16 names.)

Claiming that this would constitute a political statement, the Sinclair Broadcast Group, a media company whose executives have strongly supported President Bush, took the unusual action of barring the seven ABC-affiliated stations it controls from airing the show. The decision to censor the broadcast drew criticism from both sides, including members of the armed forces, opponents of the war, MoveOn.org, and most notably Republican Senator John McCain, who denounced the move as "unpatriotic" and "a gross disservice to the public"

References

1. "Iraq Body Count". Retrieved 2006-10-21.
2. "Coalition Casualty Count: Metrics". Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. Retrieved 2006-08-10.
3. ^ "Iraq Coalition Casualties". Iraq Coalition Casualty Count. Retrieved 2006-32-10. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
4. ^ "Contractor Deaths". Iraq Coalition Casualties. Retrieved 2006-08-10.
5. "Iraq suicide bomb kills at least 125". CNN. 2005-02-28. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
6. Wingert, Pat and Thomas, Evan (2006-03-20). "Iraq War Doctor: On Call in Hell". Newsweek. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
7. Zoroya, Gregg (2005-10-18). "1 in 4 Iraq vets ailing on return". USA Today. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
8. ^ "A Dossier of Civilian Casualties in Iraq: 2003 - 2005". Iraqbodycount.org. Retrieved 2006-08-09.
9. "Secretary of Defense Interview with Bob Woodward - 23 Oct, 2003". United States Department of Defense: News Transcript. 2004-04-19. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
10. Steele, Jonathan (2003-05-28). "Body counts". The Guardian. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
11. Conetta, Carl (20 October 2003). "The Wages of War: Iraqi Combatant and Noncombatant Fatalities in the 2003 Conflict". Project on Defense Alternatives Research Monograph #8. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
12. "Study puts Iraqi toll at 100,000". CNN. 2004-10-29. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
13. "Iraq Living Conditions Survey 2004". United Nations Development Programme. Retrieved 2006-08-09.
14. Wanniski, Jude (August 21, 2003). "Civilian War Deaths in Iraq". Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
15. Janabi, Ahmed (2004-07-31). "Iraqi group: Civilian toll over 37,000". Al Jazeera. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
16. Roug, Louise and Smith, Doug (2006-06-25). "War's Iraqi Death Toll Tops 50,000". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
17. ^ Cooney, Daniel (2004-05-23). "5,500 Iraqis Killed, Morgue Records Show". Associated Press. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
18. Barstow, David (2004-04-19). "Security Companies: Shadow Soldiers in Iraq". New York Times. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
19. Cambanis, Thanassis and Glain, Stephen (2004-04-02). "As insurgent attacks increase, so do contractors' costs". The Boston Globe. Retrieved 2006-08-09. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
20. Fisk, Robert and Cockburn, Patrick (2004-04-13). "Deaths of scores of mercenaries hidden from view". The Star. Retrieved 2006-08-07. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
21. http://image.thelancet.com/extras/04art10342web.pdf
22. http://web1.whs.osd.mil/mmid/casualty/Death_Rates.pdf
23. "Is an Armament Sickening U.S. Soldiers?". Associated Press. 2006-08-12. Retrieved 2006-09-08.
24. "Combat Duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mental Health Problems, and Barriers to Care". The New England Journal of Medicine.
25. "House of Commons Hansard Written Answers for 4 Oct 2004". The United Kingdom Parliament.

See also

• United States casualties of war
• Posttraumatic stress disorder
• Suicide bombings in Iraq since 2003
• Lancet surveys of mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq
• Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict
• Iraq Body Count project

External links and references

U.S. military casualties only

• "Faces of the Fallen", Washington Post database of all U.S. service-member casualties from Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF)
• Statistical Summary: America's Major Wars (does not include Iraq War), cwc.lsu.edu
• "A Look At Those Who Died in Iraq", New York Times interactive
• U.S. Military Casualties, United States Department of Defense
• Timeline: US losses in Iraq since 1 May 2003, BBC News, last updated 5 May 2004
• "Honor the Fallen", database of U.S. troops killed in OIF and OEF
• "US Military Personnel Wounded in Iraq & Afghanistan: A Running Log", last updated 18 December 2003
• "U.S. Military Deaths in Bush's Iraq Quagmire", chart
• U.S. deaths in Vietnam and Iraq, comparative graph of casualties from beginning of conflicts, www.lies.com
• U.S. Casualties in Iraq, globalsecurity.org

Coalition (including U.S. and contractors) casualties only

• "Iraq Coalition Body Count", detailed monthly statistics, icasualties.org
• U.S. & Coalition Casualties, CNN database
• An incomplete list of contractors and security personnel killed in Iraq, icasualties.org
• "Iraq War Coalition Fatalities", Flash graphic of Iraq map showing Coalition casualties over time with location, obleek.com

Iraqi casualties only

• Iraqi civilian death toll, from the Iraq Body Count project
• Les Roberts, Riyadh Lafta, Richard Garfield, Jamal Khudhairi and Gilbert Burnham, "Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey" (free registration required), The Lancet, 20 November 2004; 364:1857-1864
• Gilbert Burnham, Riyadh Lafta, Shannon Doocy, and Les Roberts, "Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey" (free registration required), The Lancet, published online 11 October 2006
• Les Roberts seminar at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, on 13 April 2005; uploaded in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5vD_Ub2K_c on 25 October 2006.

General and miscellaneous

• "Wage Peace Movie", 2-minute web movie about casualties in Iraq from the American Friends Service Committee
• "Eyes Wide Open", a travelling exhibition on the human cost of war
• "Casualties of the War in Iraq", link and news aggregator, purposeless.com
• "Iraq: Journalists in Danger - A statistical profile of journalists killed on duty since March 2003 in Iraq", Committee to Protect Journalists
• "Likely Humanitarian Scenarios", UN internal memo predicting 100,000 direct and 400,000 indirect casualties as a result of the invasion, 10 December 2002

• Current events
• Effects of the 2003 Iraq conflict
• War casualties
• George W. Bush administration controversies