Iraq war deaths 'total 655,000'
Iraqis are suffering under the present instability
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Wednesday, 11, Oct 2006 01:29
The number of Iraqis thought to have died because of the country's invasion and subsequent occupation by western coalition forces has reached an estimated 655,000, according to a new study.
Gilbert Burnham and colleagues from the John Hopkins Bloomberg school of public health in Baltimore, publishing their findings in the online edition of the medical Lancet journal, compared mortality rates and causes after the 2003 invasion with data in the final two years of Saddam Hussein's regime.
The study found that the vast majority of the additional deaths came from violent causes, 31 per cent of which were attributed to coalition forces.
Fifty-six per cent of the deaths were caused by gunshots, with air strikes, car bombs and other explosions each responsible for 13-14 per cent of the remainder.
"We estimate that almost 655, 000 people - 2.5 per cent of the population - have died in Iraq," the authors conclude.
"Although such death rates might be common in times of war, the combination of a long duration and tens of millions of people affected has made this the deadliest international conflict of the 21st century, and should be of grave concern to everyone."
The authors call for an international monitoring body to be set up, lamenting the fact that similar calls published in the wake of a death toll count of 100,000 in 2004 have been ignored.
Meanwhile Richard Horton, editor of the Lancet, said he believed the humanitarian consequences of the struggle in Iraq should prompt a wide-ranging re-evaluation of the purpose of foreign policy.
"The disaster that is the west's current strategy in Iraq must be used as a constructive call to the international community to reconfigure its foreign policy around human security rather than national security, around health and wellbeing in addition to the protection of territorial boundaries and economic stability," he said.