Iraq violence 'claims 151,000'
Violent deaths have fallen recently in Iraq
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Thursday, 10, Jan 2008 10:57
At least 100,000 Iraqi civilians died violent deaths in the first three years of coalition control, the World Health Organisation (WHO) believes.
Between March 2003 and June 2006 a survey of 9,345 households in Iraq conducted by WHO and the Iraqi government suggested 151,000 civilians had died from violence.
Because of difficulties in establishing the death toll caused by ongoing security issues and high mobility levels the actual number could be as low as 104,000 or as high as 223,000, it adds.
The research, published online by the New England Journal of Medicine, suggests an average of 118 Iraqis died every day in the first year after the fall of Saddam Hussein.
It says over half the deaths occurred in Baghdad and that violent death is now the leading cause of death for males between 15 and 59 years old.
"The survey results indicate a massive death toll since the beginning of the conflict," Iraqi health minister Salih Mahdi Motlab Al-Hasanawi said.
Its death toll estimate is four times lower than an earlier, smaller-scale survey, but remains significantly higher than figures from the Iraq Body Count (IBC) project, which estimated around 30,000 deaths in the first three years since the invasion.
At present levels of violence in Iraq appear to be falling due, coalition forces claim, to US president George Bush's controversial 'troop surge'.
IBC says between 22,586 and 24,159 Iraqi civilians were killed violently in 2007, down by about 3,000 on 2006's figures.