Casualties of the conflict in Iraq since 2003

Casualties of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 (beginning with the 2003 invasion of Iraq

2003 invasion of Iraq

The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...

, and continuing with the ensuing 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 Iraq War casualties varies greatly.

The table below summarizes some of the Iraqi casualty figures.

Source	Iraqi casualties	Time period
Iraq Family Health Survey	151,000 deaths	March 2003 to June 2006
Lancet survey	601,027 violent deaths out of 654,965 excess deaths	March 2003 to June 2006
Opinion Research Business survey ORB survey of Iraq War casualties On Friday, 14 September 2007, ORB , an independent polling agency located in London, published estimates of the total war casualties in Iraq since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. At over 1.2 million deaths , this estimate is the highest number published so far...	1,033,000 deaths as a result of the conflict	March 2003 to August 2007
Associated Press Associated Press The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...	110,600 deaths	March 2003 to April 2009
Iraq Body Count project Iraq Body Count project Iraq Body Count project is a web-based effort to record civilian deaths resulting from the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. Included are deaths attributable to coalition and insurgent military action, sectarian violence and criminal violence, which refers to excess civilian deaths caused by criminal...	103,536 — 113,125 civilian deaths as a result of the conflict. Over 150,726 civilian and combatant deaths	March 2003 to October 2011
WikiLeaks Wikileaks WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more... . Classified Iraq war logs	109,032 deaths including 66,081 civilian deaths.	January 2004 to December 2009

For troops in the U.S.-led multinational coalition

Multinational force in Iraq

The Multi-National Force – Iraq was a military command, led by the United States, which was responsible for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Multi-National Force – Iraq replaced the previous force, Combined Joint Task Force 7, on 15 May 2004, and was later itself reorganized into its successor, United...

, the death toll

Death Toll

Death Toll is a 2008 action film starring DMX, Lou Diamond Phillips, Leila Arcieri and Keshia Knight Pulliam, written and produced by Daniel Garcia of the rap group Kane & Abel and directed by Phenomenon...

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 precise and less consistent. 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

Casualty (person)

A casualty is a person who is the victim of an accident, injury, or trauma. The word casualties is most often used by the news media to describe deaths and injuries resulting from wars or disasters...

" 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. Iraqi death estimates by source

Summary of casualties of the Iraq War.
Possible estimates on the number of people killed in the invasion and occupation of Iraq vary widely, and are highly disputed. Estimates of casualties below include both the 2003 invasion of Iraq

2003 invasion of Iraq

and the following Post-invasion Iraq, 2003–present.

Iraq war logs	Classified US military documents released by WikiLeaks Iraq War documents leak The Iraq War documents leak is the unsanctioned disclosure of a collection of 391,832 United States Army field reports, also called the Iraq War Logs, of the Iraq War from 2004 to 2009 to several international media organizations and published on the Internet by WikiLeaks on 2010. The files record... in October 2010, record Iraqi and Coalition military deaths between January 2004 and December 2009. The documents record 109,032 deaths broken down into "Civilian" (66,081 deaths), "Host Nation" (15,196 deaths),"Enemy" (23,984 deaths), and "Friendly" (3,771 deaths).
Iraqi Health Ministry	The Health Ministry of the Iraqi government Politics of Iraq The politics of Iraq takes place in a framework of a federal parliamentary representative democratic republic. It is a multi-party system whereby the executive power is exercised by the Prime Minister of the Council of Ministers as the head of government, as well as the President of Iraq, and... recorded 87,215 Iraqi violent deaths between January 1, 2005, and February 28, 2009. The data was in the form of a list of yearly totals for death certificates issued for violent deaths by hospitals and morgues. The official who provided the data the Associated Press said the ministry does not have figures for the first two years of the war, and estimated the actual number of deaths at 10 to 20 percent higher because of thousands who are still missing and civilians who were buried in the chaos of war without official records.
The Associated Press	*Associated Press* stated that more than 110,600 Iraqis had been killed since the start of the war to April 2009. This number is per the Health Ministry tally of 87,215 covering January 1, 2005, to February 28, 2009 combined with counts of casualties for 2003–2004, and after February 29, 2009, from hospital sources and media reports. For more info see farther down at The Associated Press and Health Ministry. More information.
Iraq Body Count	The Iraq Body Count project Iraq Body Count project Iraq Body Count project is a web-based effort to record civilian deaths resulting from the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. Included are deaths attributable to coalition and insurgent military action, sectarian violence and criminal violence, which refers to excess civilian deaths caused by criminal... (IBC) figure of 94,902 — 103,549 civilian deaths reported in English-language media (including Arabic media translated into English) up to December 2009 includes civilian deaths due to coalition and insurgent military action, sectarian violence and increased criminal violence. The IBC site states: "it should be noted that many deaths will probably go unreported or unrecorded by officials and media."
Iraq Family Health Survey (with WHO)	Iraq Family Health Survey for the World Health Organization World Health Organization The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on 7 April 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health... . On January 9, 2008, the World Health Organization reported the results of the "Iraq Family Health Survey" published in The New England Journal of Medicine. The study surveyed 9,345 households across Iraq and estimated 151,000 deaths due to violence (95% uncertainty range, 104,000 to 223,000) from March 2003 through June 2006. Employees of the Iraqi Health Ministry carried out the survey. See also farther down: Iraq Family Health Survey.
Opinion Research Business (ORB) poll	Opinion Research Business (ORB) poll ORB survey of Iraq War casualties On Friday, 14 September 2007, ORB , an independent polling agency located in London, published estimates of the total war casualties in Iraq since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. At over 1.2 million deaths , this estimate is the highest number published so far... conducted August 12–19, 2007, estimated 1,033,000 violent deaths due to the Iraq War. The range given was 946,000 to 1,120,000 deaths. A nationally representative sample of approximately 2,000 Iraqi adults answered whether any members of their household (living under their roof) were killed due to the Iraq War. 22% of the respondents had lost one or more household members. ORB reported that "48% died from a gunshot wound, 20% from the impact of a car bomb, 9% from aerial bombardment, 6% as a result of an accident and 6% from another blast/ordnance."
United Nations	The United Nations United Nations The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace... reported that 34,452 violent deaths occurred in 2006, based on data from morgues, hospitals, and municipal authorities across Iraq.
Lancet studies	The Lancet study's figure of 654,965 excess deaths through the end of June 2006 is based on household survey data. The estimate is for all excess violent and nonviolent deaths. That also includes those due to increased lawlessness, degraded infrastructure, poorer healthcare, etc. 601,027 deaths (range of 426,369 to 793,663 using a 95% confidence interval Confidence interval In statistics, a confidence interval is a particular kind of interval estimate of a population parameter and is used to indicate the reliability of an estimate. It is an observed interval , in principle different from sample to sample, that frequently includes the parameter of interest, if the... ) were estimated to be due to violence. 31% of those were attributed to the Coalition, 24% to others, 46% unknown. The causes of violent deaths were gunshot Gunshot A gunshot is the discharge of a firearm, producing a mechanical sound effect and a chemical gunshot residue. The term can also refer to a gunshot wound caused by such a discharge. Multiple discharges of a firearm or firearms are referred to as gunfire. The word can connotate either the sound of a... (56%), car bomb Car bomb A car bomb, or truck bomb also known as a Vehicle Borne Improvised Explosive Device , is an improvised explosive device placed in a car or other vehicle and then detonated. It is commonly used as a weapon of assassination, terrorism, or guerrilla warfare, to kill the occupants of the vehicle,... (13%), other explosion Explosion An explosion is a rapid increase in volume and release of energy in an extreme manner, usually with the generation of high temperatures and the release of gases. An explosion creates a shock wave. If the shock wave is a supersonic detonation, then the source of the blast is called a "high explosive"... /ordnance Artillery Originally applied to any group of infantry primarily armed with projectile weapons, artillery has over time become limited in meaning to refer only to those engines of war that operate by projection of munitions far beyond the range of effect of personal weapons... (14%), airstrike Airstrike An air strike is an attack on a specific objective by military aircraft during an offensive mission. Air strikes are commonly delivered from aircraft such as fighters, bombers, ground attack aircraft, attack helicopters, and others... (13%), accident Accident An accident or mishap is an unforeseen and unplanned event or circumstance, often with lack of intention or necessity. It implies a generally negative outcome which may have been avoided or prevented had circumstances leading up to the accident been recognized, and acted upon, prior to its... (2%), unknown (2%). A copy of a death certificate Death certificate The phrase death certificate can describe either a document issued by a medical practitioner certifying the deceased state of a person or popularly to a document issued by a person such as a registrar of vital statistics that declares the date, location and cause of a person's death as later... was available for a high proportion of the reported deaths (92% of those households asked to produce one).
Ali al-Shemari (earlier Iraqi Health Minister)	Concerning war-related deaths (civilian and non-civilian), and deaths from criminal gangs, Iraq's Health Minister Council of Ministers of Iraq The Cabinet of Iraq is the executive branch of the government of Iraq.The National Assembly of Iraq elects a President of State who along with two deputies form the Presidency Council. The Presidency Council appoints the Prime Minister who appoints the Council of Ministers, all of whom must be... Ali al-Shemari Ali al-Shemari Ali al-Shemari is an Iraqi politician from the Sadrist Movement who was the Health Minister of Iraq from May 20, 2006 until April 16, 2007.Al-Shemari's deputy, Hakim al-Zamili, and his security chief, Hamid al-Shammari, were arrested and tried in 2007 on claims they ran a death squad that attacked... said that since the March 2003 invasion between 100,000 and 150,000 Iraqis had been killed. "Al-Shemari said on Thursday [November 9, 2006] that he based his figure on an estimate of 100 bodies per day brought to morgues and hospitals – though such a calculation would come out closer to 130,000 in total." For more info see farther down at Iraq Health Minister estimate in November 2006.

Iraqi Security Forces (aligned with Coalition)

||
From June 2003, through December 31, 2010, there have been 16,623 Iraqi military and police killed based on several estimates. The Iraq Index of the Brookings Institution

Brookings Institution

The Brookings Institution is a nonprofit public policy organization based in Washington, D.C., in the United States. One of Washington's oldest think tanks, Brookings conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in economics, metropolitan policy, governance, foreign policy, and...

keeps a running total of ISF casualties. There is also a breakdown of ISF casualties at the iCasualties.org

ICasualties.org

iCasualties.org, formally the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count,is an independent websitecreated in May 2003 by Michael White, a software engineer from Stone Mountain, Georgia, to track casualties in the Afghanistan War and Iraq War....

website.
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Iraqi insurgents

||
From June 2003, through September 30, 2011, there have been 26,320 Iraqi insurgents killed based on several estimates.
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Media and aid workers

||
136 journalists and 51 media support workers were killed on duty according to the numbers listed on source pages on February 24, 2009. 94 aid workers have been killed according to a November 21, 2007, Reuters

Reuters

Reuters is a news agency headquartered in New York City. Until 2008 the Reuters news agency formed part of a British independent company, Reuters Group plc, which was also a provider of financial market data...

article.
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U.S. armed forces

As of May 28, 2010, there were 4,404 dead and 31,827 wounded in action

Wounded in action

Wounded in action describes soldiers who have been wounded while fighting in a combat zone during war time, but have not been killed. Typically it implies that they are temporarily or permanently incapable of bearing arms or continuing to fight....

(WIA). See the references for a breakdown of the wounded, injured, ill, those returned to duty (RTD), those requiring medical air transport, non-hostile-related medical air transports, non-hostile injuries, diseases, or other medical reasons.

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Coalition deaths by hostile fire

||, hostile-fire deaths accounted for 3,777 of the 4,799 total coalition military deaths.

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Armed forces of other coalition countries

||See Multinational force in Iraq

Multinational force in Iraq

.

, there were 318 deaths from the armed forces of other Coalition nations. 179 UK deaths and 139 deaths from other nations. Breakdown:

Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

— 21
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan , officially the Republic of Azerbaijan is the largest country in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded by the Caspian Sea to the east, Russia to the north, Georgia to the northwest, Armenia to the west, and Iran to...

— 1
Bulgaria
Bulgaria
Bulgaria , officially the Republic of Bulgaria , is a parliamentary democracy within a unitary constitutional republic in Southeast Europe. The country borders Romania to the north, Serbia and Macedonia to the west, Greece and Turkey to the south, as well as the Black Sea to the east...

— 13
Czech Republic
Czech Republic
The Czech Republic is a landlocked country in Central Europe. The country is bordered by Poland to the northeast, Slovakia to the east, Austria to the south, and Germany to the west and northwest....

— 1
Denmark
Denmark
Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

— 7
El Salvador
El Salvador
El Salvador or simply Salvador is the smallest and the most densely populated country in Central America. The country's capital city and largest city is San Salvador; Santa Ana and San Miguel are also important cultural and commercial centers in the country and in all of Central America...

— 5
Estonia
Estonia
Estonia , officially the Republic of Estonia , is a state in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland, to the west by the Baltic Sea, to the south by Latvia , and to the east by Lake Peipsi and the Russian Federation . Across the Baltic Sea lies...

— 2
Fiji
Fiji
Fiji , officially the Republic of Fiji , is an island nation in Melanesia in the South Pacific Ocean about northeast of New Zealand's North Island...

— 1
Georgia
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...

— 5
Hungary
Hungary
Hungary , officially the Republic of Hungary , is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is situated in the Carpathian Basin and is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine and Romania to the east, Serbia and Croatia to the south, Slovenia to the southwest and Austria to the west. The...

— 1
Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

— 33

Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan
Kazakhstan , officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Ranked as the ninth largest country in the world, it is also the world's largest landlocked country; its territory of is greater than Western Europe...

— 1
Latvia
Latvia
Latvia , officially the Republic of Latvia , is a country in the Baltic region of Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by Estonia , to the south by Lithuania , to the east by the Russian Federation , to the southeast by Belarus and shares maritime borders to the west with Sweden...

— 3
Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

— 2
Poland
Poland
Poland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...

— 30
Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

— 1
Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...

— 4
Slovakia
Slovakia
The Slovak Republic is a landlocked state in Central Europe. It has a population of over five million and an area of about . Slovakia is bordered by the Czech Republic and Austria to the west, Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east and Hungary to the south...

— 4
South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...

— 1
Spain
Spain
Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

— 11
Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...

— 2
Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

— 18
United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

— 179

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Contractors

||Contractors

Private military company

A private military company or provides military and security services. These combatants are commonly known as mercenaries, though modern-day PMCs refer to their staff as security contractors, private military contractors or private security contractors, and refer to themselves as private military...

. At least 1,487 deaths between March 2003 and June 2011 according to the list of private contractor deaths in Iraq. 245 of those are from the U.S. Contractors are "Americans, Iraqis and workers from more than three dozen other countries." 10,569 wounded or injured. Contractors "cook meals, do laundry, repair infrastructure, translate documents, analyze intelligence, guard prisoners, protect military convoys, deliver water in the heavily fortified Green Zone and stand sentry at buildings - often highly dangerous duties almost identical to those performed by many U.S. troops." A July 4, 2007, Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

The Los Angeles Times is a daily newspaper published in Los Angeles, California, since 1881. It was the second-largest metropolitan newspaper in circulation in the United States in 2008 and the fourth most widely distributed newspaper in the country....

article reported 182,000 employees of U.S.-government-funded contractors and subcontractors (118,000 Iraqi, 43,000 other, 21,000 U.S.).
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Iraqi invasion casualties

In March 2002 — before the Iraq War — at a news conference at Bagram Air Base

Bagram Air Base

Bagram Airfield, also referred to as Bagram Air Base, is a militarized airport and housing complex that is located next to the ancient city of Bagram, southeast of Charikar in Parwan province of Afghanistan. The base is run by a US Army division headed by a major general. A large part of the base,...

, Afghanistan

Afghanistan

Afghanistan , officially the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located in the centre of Asia, forming South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. With a population of about 29 million, it has an area of , making it the 42nd most populous and 41st largest nation in the world...

, U.S. General Tommy Franks

Tommy Franks

Tommy Ray Franks is a retired general in the United States Army. His last Army post was as the Commander of the United States Central Command, overseeing United States Armed Forces operations in a 25-country region, including the Middle East...

had said, "we don't do body counts."

Franks reportedly estimated soon after the invasion that there had been 30,000 Iraqi casualties as of April 9, 2003. That number comes from the transcript of an October 2003 interview of U.S. Defense Secretary

United States Secretary of Defense

The Secretary of Defense is the head and chief executive officer of the Department of Defense of the United States of America. This position corresponds to what is generally known as a Defense Minister in other countries...

Donald Rumsfeld

Donald Henry Rumsfeld is an American politician and businessman. Rumsfeld served as the 13th Secretary of Defense from 1975 to 1977 under President Gerald Ford, and as the 21st Secretary of Defense from 2001 to 2006 under President George W. Bush. He is both the youngest and the oldest person to...

with journalist Bob Woodward

Bob Woodward

Robert Upshur Woodward is an American investigative journalist and non-fiction author. He has worked for The Washington Post since 1971 as a reporter, and is currently an associate editor of the Post....

. They were discussing a number reported by The Washington Post

The Washington Post

The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...

. But neither could remember the number clearly, nor whether it was just for deaths, or both deaths and wounded.

A May 28, 2003, Guardian

The Guardian

The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...

article reported "Extrapolating from the death-rates of between 3% and 10% found in the units around Baghdad, one reaches a toll of between 13,500 and 45,000 dead among troops and paramilitaries.

An October 20, 2003, study by the Project on Defense Alternatives at Commonwealth Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...

, stated that for March 19, 2003, to April 30, 2003, "Based on the analysis that follows we estimate that the 2003 Iraq war produced between 7,600 and 10,800 Iraqi combatant fatalities."

The study also stated: "Our analysis of the evidence leads to the conclusion that between 10,800 and 15,100 Iraqis were killed in the war. Of these, between 3,200 and 4,300 were noncombatants – that is: civilians who did not take up arms."

The study explained that to arrive at these numbers, 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."

The study author Carl Conetta reported: "All told, more than 40,000 Iraqis were killed or injured,"

The Iraq Body Count project

Iraq Body Count project

Iraq Body Count project is a web-based effort to record civilian deaths resulting from the US-led 2003 invasion of Iraq. Included are deaths attributable to coalition and insurgent military action, sectarian violence and criminal violence, which refers to excess civilian deaths caused by criminal...

(IBC) documented a higher number of civilian deaths up to the end of the major combat phase (May 1, 2003). In a 2005 report, using updated information, the IBC reported that 7,299 civilians are documented to have been killed, primarily by U.S. air and ground forces. There were 17,338 civilian injuries inflicted up to May 1, 2003. The IBC says its figures are probably underestimates because: "many deaths will probably go unreported or unrecorded by officials and media."

Iraqi civilian casualties

Iraqi civilians have suffered the bulk of fatalities in this conflict. Estimates of Iraqi civilian casualties are highly disputed. It is difficult for most estimates of Iraqi casualties to separate civilian from combatant casualties. Various estimates are discussed below, and elsewhere in this article. See also the section on total Iraqi casualties. In December 2007, the Iraqi government reported that there were five million orphan

Orphan

An orphan is a child permanently bereaved of or abandoned by his or her parents. In common usage, only a child who has lost both parents is called an orphan...

s in Iraq — almost half of the country's children.

For the major combat phase of the war from March to April 2003, Abu Dhabi TV

Abu Dhabi TV

Abu Dhabi Al Oula is an Arabic television station that originally launched in 1969 but was re-launched in 2000 and again in 2008. It broadcasts from Abu Dhabi, capital of the United Arab Emirates and is owned by Abu Dhabi Media Company...

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

Iraq Body Count project

(IBC 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 U.S. air-and-ground forces.

People's Kifah

A study by an Iraqi political party, the People's Kifah, or Struggle Against Hegemony (PK), reported the findings of a survey it conducted between March and June 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 in August 2003 on the website of Jude Wanniski

Jude Wanniski

Jude Thaddeus Wanniski was an American journalist, conservative commentator, and political economist.- Early life and education :...

, a retired reporter for The Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal

The Wall Street Journal is an American English-language international daily newspaper. It is published in New York City by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corporation, along with the Asian and European editions of the Journal....

. 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 on Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera is an independent broadcaster owned by the state of Qatar through the Qatar Media Corporation and headquartered in Doha, Qatar...

's website. The Al Jazeera report claims the study covered up to October 2003, but this cannot be accurate, as exactly the same figures were already published on the Wanniski website in August 2003.

Note that both the IDC project below and PK 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

Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the fifth President of Iraq, serving in this capacity from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003...

's regime.

Iraq Body Count project

An independent UK/US group, the IBC 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

Iraqi insurgency

The Iraqi Resistance is composed of a diverse mix of militias, foreign fighters, all-Iraqi units or mixtures opposing the United States-led multinational force in Iraq and the post-2003 Iraqi government...

, and those resulting from excess crime (the IBC project asserts that the Occupying Authority is responsible to prevent these deaths under international law

International law

Public international law concerns the structure and conduct of sovereign states; analogous entities, such as the Holy See; and intergovernmental organizations. To a lesser degree, international law also may affect multinational corporations and individuals, an impact increasingly evolving beyond...

). It shows a minimum of 99,004 and a maximum of 108,076 as of December 2, 2010.

This total represents civilian deaths that have been reported by media organizations, non-governmental-organization

Non-governmental organization

A non-governmental organization is a legally constituted organization created by natural or legal persons that operates independently from any government. The term originated from the United Nations , and is normally used to refer to organizations that do not form part of the government and are...

-based reports, and official records. The IBC project has been criticized by some who believe it counts only a small percentage of the number of actual deaths because it only includes deaths reported by respected media agencies. The IBC project's director, John Sloboda

John Sloboda

John Sloboda was Executive Director of the Oxford Research Group, an NGO that seeks to develop non-violent approaches to national and international security issues, from 2005-2009. He is currently Director of ORG's Recording Casualties of Armed Conflict programme...

, has stated, "We've always said our work is an undercount, you can't possibly expect that a media-based analysis will get all the deaths." However, the IBC project rejects many of these criticisms as exaggerated or misinformed.

Following are the yearly IBC project civilian-death totals (as of August 14, 2011):

Year	Civilian deaths
2003	12,079
2004	10,834
2005	15,034
2006	27,850
2007	24,677
2008	9,245
2009	4,681
2010	4,045
2011	2,407

Concerning the yearly totals, IBC project states: "All figures are taken from the "maximum" confirmed deaths in the IBC database. However, IBC's rates and counts will rise over the coming months, as data is still being added to the IBC database for 2006 and other periods covered here."

The IBC project released a report detailing the deaths it recorded between March 2003 and March 2005 in which it recorded 24,865 civilian deaths. The report says the U.S. 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%). It also lists the primary sources used by the media — mortuaries, medics, Iraqi officials, eyewitnesses, police, relatives, U.S.-coalition, journalists, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), friends/associates and other.

Iraqi refugees crisis

As of November 4, 2006, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees

United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees , also known as The UN Refugee Agency is a United Nations agency mandated to protect and support refugees at the request of a government or the UN itself and assists in their voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement to...

estimated that 1.8 million Iraqis had been displaced to neighboring countries, and 1.6 million were displaced internally, with nearly 100,000 Iraqis fleeing to Syria

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

and Jordan

Jordan

Jordan , officially the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan , Al-Mamlaka al-Urduniyya al-Hashemiyya) is a kingdom on the East Bank of the River Jordan. The country borders Saudi Arabia to the east and south-east, Iraq to the north-east, Syria to the north and the West Bank and Israel to the west, sharing...

each month.

As of 2007 more Iraqis had lost their homes and become refugees than the population of any other country. Over 3.9 million people, close to 16 percent of the Iraqi population, have become uprooted. Of these, around 2 million have fled Iraq and flooded other countries, and 1.9 million are estimated to be refugees inside Iraq.

Roughly 40 percent of Iraq's middle class

Middle class

The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....

is believed to have fled, the U.N. said. Most are fleeing systematic persecution and have no desire to return. All kinds of people, from university professors to bakers, have been targeted by militias, Iraqi insurgents

Iraqi insurgency

and criminals. An estimated 331 school teachers were slain in the first four months of 2006, according to Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch

Human Rights Watch is an international non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. Its headquarters are in New York City and it has offices in Berlin, Beirut, Brussels, Chicago, Geneva, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Moscow, Paris, San Francisco, Tokyo,...

, and at least 2,000 Iraqi doctors have been killed and 250 kidnapped since the 2003 U.S. invasion.

Project Censored

Project Censored

Project Censored is a non-profit, media criticism and investigative journalism project within the Sonoma State University Foundation. It is managed through the School of Social Sciences at the university....

cites the large number of Iraqi refugees as additional support of their argument that the number of Iraqi casualties is much larger than generally addressed in the mainstream media.

A May 25, 2007, article in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Seattle Post-Intelligencer

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer is an online newspaper and former print newspaper covering Seattle, Washington, United States, and the surrounding metropolitan area...

noted that in the past seven months only 69 people from Iraq had been granted refugee status in the U.S. As a result of growing international pressure, on June 1, 2007, the Bush administration said it was ready to admit 7,000 Iraqi refugees who had helped the coalition since the invasion. According to Washington, D.C.-based Refugees International

Refugees International

Refugees International is a humanitarian organization supporting refugees and stateless people. It publishes annual reports, as well as approximately twenty-five field reports throughout the year on refugee issues, as well as comments on international aid issues around the world...

, the U.S. has admitted fewer than 800 Iraqi refugees since the invasion, Sweden had accepted 18,000, and Australia had resettled almost 6,000.

Non-Iraqi civilian casualties

Many non-combatants from both coalition and non-coalition countries have also been killed or wounded, including journalist

Journalist

A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...

s and international aid personnel and foreign civilians. See the main overview chart at the top for numbers and more information.

Coalition military casualties

For the latest casualty numbers see the overview chart at the top of the page. See also the icasualties.org site: or the Iraq Page.

Since the official handover of power to the Iraqi Interim Government

Iraqi Interim Government

The Iraqi Interim Government was created by the United States and its coalition allies as a caretaker government to govern Iraq until the Iraqi Transitional Government was installed following the Iraqi National Assembly election conducted on January 30, 2005...

on June 28, 2004, coalition soldiers have continued to come under attack in towns across Iraq.

National Public Radio, iCasualties.org

ICasualties.org

, and GlobalSecurity.org

GlobalSecurity.org

GlobalSecurity.org, launched in 2000, is a public policy organization focusing on the fields of defense, space exploration, intelligence, weapons of mass destruction and homeland security...

have month-by-month charts of American troop deaths in the Iraq War.

The British Casualty Monitor has a fortnightly updated graphical analysis of British casualties.

The combined total of coalition and contractor casualties in the conflict is now over ten times that of the 1990–1991 Gulf War

Gulf War

The Persian Gulf War , commonly referred to as simply the Gulf War, was a war waged by a U.N.-authorized coalition force from 34 nations led by the United States, against Iraq in response to Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait.The war is also known under other names, such as the First Gulf...

. 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.

Troops fallen ill, injured, or wounded

See the overview chart at the top of the page for recent numbers.

On August 29, 2006, The Christian Science Monitor

The Christian Science Monitor

The Christian Science Monitor is an international newspaper published daily online, Monday to Friday, and weekly in print. It was started in 1908 by Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of the Church of Christ, Scientist. As of 2009, the print circulation was 67,703.The CSM is a newspaper that covers...

reported: "Because of new body armor and advances in military medicine, for example, the ratio of combat-zone deaths to those wounded has dropped from 24 percent in Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

to 13 percent in Iraq and Afghanistan. In other words, the numbers of those killed as a percentage of overall casualties is lower."

Many U.S. veterans of the Iraq War have reported a range of serious health issues, including tumor

Tumor

A tumor or tumour is commonly used as a synonym for a neoplasm that appears enlarged in size. Tumor is not synonymous with cancer...

s, daily blood in urine and stool, sexual dysfunction

Sexual dysfunction

Sexual dysfunction or sexual malfunction refers to a difficulty experienced by an individual or a couple during any stage of a normal sexual activity, including desire, arousal or orgasm....

, migraine

Migraine

Migraine is a chronic neurological disorder characterized by moderate to severe headaches, and nausea...

s, frequent muscle spasm

Spasm

In medicine a spasm is a sudden, involuntary contraction of a muscle, a group of muscles, or a hollow organ, or a similarly sudden contraction of an orifice. It is sometimes accompanied by a sudden burst of pain, but is usually harmless and ceases after a few minutes...

s, and other symptoms similar to the debilitating symptoms of "Gulf War syndrome

Gulf War syndrome

Gulf War syndrome or Gulf War illness describes a medical condition that affected veterans and civilians who were near conflicts during or downwind of chemical weapons depot demolition, after the 1991 Gulf War. A wide range of acute and chronic symptoms have included fatigue, musculoskeletal...

" reported by many veterans of the 1991 Gulf War, which some believe is related to the U.S.'s use of radioactive

Radioactive decay

Radioactive decay is the process by which an atomic nucleus of an unstable atom loses energy by emitting ionizing particles . The emission is spontaneous, in that the atom decays without any physical interaction with another particle from outside the atom...

depleted uranium

Depleted uranium

Depleted uranium is uranium with a lower content of the fissile isotope U-235 than natural uranium . Uses of DU take advantage of its very high density of 19.1 g/cm3...

.

A study of U.S. veterans published in July 2004 in The New England Journal of Medicine on posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other mental disorders in Iraq and Afghanistan veterans found that 5 percent to 9.4 percent (depending on the strictness of the PTSD definition used) suffered from PTSD before deployment. After deployment, 6.2 percent to 19.9 percent suffered from PTSD. For the broad definition of PTSD that represents an increase of 10.5 percent (19.9 percent - 9.4 percent = 10.5 percent). That is 10,500 additional cases of PTSD for every 100,000 U.S. troops after they have served in Iraq. ePluribus Media, an independent citizen journalism collective, is tracking and cataloging press-reported possible, probable, or confirmed incidents of post-deployment or combat-zone cases in its PTSD Timeline.

Information on injuries suffered by troops of other coalition countries is less readily available, but a statement in Hansard

Hansard

Hansard is the name of the printed transcripts of parliamentary debates in the Westminster system of government. It is named after Thomas Curson Hansard, an early printer and publisher of these transcripts.-Origins:...

indicated that 2,703 U.K. soldiers had been medically evacuated from Iraq for wounds or injuries as of October 4, 2004, and that 155 U.K. troops were wounded in combat in the initial invasion.

Leishmaniasis

Leishmaniasis

Leishmaniasis is a disease caused by protozoan parasites that belong to the genus Leishmania and is transmitted by the bite of certain species of sand fly...

has been reported by U.S. troops stationed in Iraq, including visceral leishmaniasis

Visceral leishmaniasis

Visceral leishmaniasis , also known as kala-azar, black fever, and Dumdum fever, is the most severe form of leishmaniasis. Leishmaniasis is a disease caused by protozoan parasites of the Leishmania genus. This disease is the second-largest parasitic killer in the world , responsible for an...

. The number of those who may become infected could reach 750 to 1,250 or even more, what made up to nearly one percent of U.S. troops serving in Iraq in from 2003 to 2004.

Accidents and negligence

As of August 2008, sixteen American troops have died from accidental electrocutions in Iraq according to the Defense Department. One soldier had been electrocuted in a shower, while another had been electrocuted in a swimming pool. KBR, the contractor responsible, had been warned by employees of unsafe practices, and was criticised following the revelations.

Nightline controversy

Ted Koppel

Edward James "Ted" Koppel is an English-born American broadcast journalist, best known as the anchor for Nightline from the program's inception in 1980 until his retirement in late 2005. After leaving Nightline, Koppel worked as managing editor for the Discovery Channel before resigning in 2008...

, host of ABC

American Broadcasting Company

The American Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network. Created in 1943 from the former NBC Blue radio network, ABC is owned by The Walt Disney Company and is part of Disney-ABC Television Group. Its first broadcast on television was in 1948...

's Nightline

Nightline

Nightline, or ABC News Nightline is a late-night news program broadcast by ABC in the United States, and has a franchised formula to other networks and stations elsewhere in the world. It airs weeknights, usually for 31 minutes. Created by Roone Arledge, the program featured Ted Koppel as its main...

, 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

Afghanistan

. (The show had not been able to confirm the remaining sixteen names.)

Claiming that this would constitute a political statement, the Sinclair Broadcast Group

Sinclair Broadcast Group

The Sinclair Broadcast Group is an American telecommunications company that operates the largest number of local television stations in the United States. Headquartered in Hunt Valley, Maryland, it owns a total of 57 stations across the country in 35 primarily small and medium markets, many of...

took the action of barring the seven ABC network-affiliated stations

Network affiliate

In the broadcasting industry , a network affiliate is a local broadcaster which carries some or all of the television program or radio program line-up of a television or radio network, but is owned by a company other than the owner of the network...

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

Republican Party (United States)

The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...

U.S. Senator

United States Senate

The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...

John McCain

John Sidney McCain III is the senior United States Senator from Arizona. He was the Republican nominee for president in the 2008 United States election....

, who denounced the move as "unpatriotic" and "a gross disservice to the public".

Amputees

As of January 18, 2007, there were at least 500 American amputees due to the Iraq War. According to a January 18, 2007, Time

Time (magazine)

Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

magazine article, the 500th victim was a 24-year-old corporal, who lost both legs in a roadside bomb explosion on January 12, 2007. He was cared for at the military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, and then was transferred to the Walter Reed Army Medical Center

Walter Reed Army Medical Center

The Walter Reed Army Medical Center was the United States Army's flagship medical center until 2011. Located on 113 acres in Washington, D.C., it served more than 150,000 active and retired personnel from all branches of the military...

, located in Washington, D.C.

The article reports: "The 500 major amputations — toes and fingers aren't counted — represent 2.2% of the 22,700 U.S. troops wounded in action. But the number rises to 5% in the category of soldiers whose wounds prevent them returning to duty."

However, in a presentation given by Dean Kamen

Dean Kamen

Dean L. Kamen is an American entrepreneur and inventor from New Hampshire.Born in Rockville Centre, New York, he attended Worcester Polytechnic Institute, but dropped out before graduating after five years of private advanced research for drug infusion pump AutoSyringe...

at a TED

TED (conference)

TED is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, formed to disseminate "ideas worth spreading"....

conference in March 2008, Dean reports that a senior Department of Defense official disclosed that "1,600 of the kids we've sent out have come back missing at least one full arm. Whole arm. Shoulder disartic..."

Traumatic brain injuries

A March 4, 2009, article in USA Today

USA Today

USA Today is a national American daily newspaper published by the Gannett Company. It was founded by Al Neuharth. The newspaper vies with The Wall Street Journal for the position of having the widest circulation of any newspaper in the United States, something it previously held since 2003...

reported that according to a Pentagon estimate, as many as 360,000 U.S. veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts may have suffered traumatic brain injuries

Traumatic brain injury

Traumatic brain injury , also known as intracranial injury, occurs when an external force traumatically injures the brain. TBI can be classified based on severity, mechanism , or other features...

(TBI), including 45,000 to 90,000 veterans with persistent symptoms requiring specialized care. (A separate estimate for the Iraq conflict alone was not specified.)

A February 2007 article in Discover

Discover (magazine)

Discover is an American science magazine that publishes articles about science for a general audience. The monthly magazine was launched in October 1980 by Time Inc. It was sold to Family Media, the owners of Health, in 1987. Walt Disney Company bought the magazine when Family Media went out of...

, "Dead Men Walking — What Sort of Future Do Brain-Injured Iraq Veterans Face?", reports: "One expert from the VA

United States Department of Veterans Affairs

The United States Department of Veterans Affairs is a government-run military veteran benefit system with Cabinet-level status. It is the United States government’s second largest department, after the United States Department of Defense...

estimates the number of undiagnosed TBIs at over 7,500. Nearly 2,000 brain-injured soldiers have already received some level of care, ..."

USA Today

USA Today

reported in November 2007:

At least 20,000 U.S. troops who were not classified as wounded during combat in Iraq and Afghanistan have been found with signs of brain injuries, according to military and veterans records compiled by USA TODAY.

The data, provided by the Army, Navy and Department of Veterans Affairs
United States Department of Veterans Affairs
The United States Department of Veterans Affairs is a government-run military veteran benefit system with Cabinet-level status. It is the United States government’s second largest department, after the United States Department of Defense...

, show that about five times as many troops sustained brain trauma as the 4,471 officially listed by The Pentagon
The Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...

through September 30. These cases also are not reflected in the Pentagon's official tally of wounded, which stands at 30,327.

Mental illness and suicide

A top U.S. Army

United States Army

The United States Army is the main branch of the United States Armed Forces responsible for land-based military operations. It is the largest and oldest established branch of the U.S. military, and is one of seven U.S. uniformed services...

psychiatrist

Psychiatrist

A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy...

, Colonel Charles Hoge, told the U.S. Congress

United States Congress

The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....

in March 2008 that nearly 30 percent of troops on their third deployment suffer from serious mental-health

Mental health

Mental health describes either a level of cognitive or emotional well-being or an absence of a mental disorder. From perspectives of the discipline of positive psychology or holism mental health may include an individual's ability to enjoy life and procure a balance between life activities and...

problems, and that one year was not enough time between combat tours.

A March 12, 2007, Time

Time (magazine)

Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

article reported on a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine

Archives of Internal Medicine

The Archives of Internal Medicine is a peer-reviewed medical journal published twice a month by the American Medical Association. The Archives of Internal Medicine was established in 1908 and covers all aspects of internal medicine, including cardiovascular disease, geriatrics, infectious disease,...

. About one third of the 103,788 veterans returning from the Iraq and Afghanistan

Afghanistan

wars seen at U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs

United States Department of Veterans Affairs

facilities between September 30, 2001, and September 30, 2005, were diagnosed with mental illness or a psycho-social disorder, such as homelessness

Homelessness

Homelessness describes the condition of people without a regular dwelling. People who are homeless are unable or unwilling to acquire and maintain regular, safe, and adequate housing, or lack "fixed, regular, and adequate night-time residence." The legal definition of "homeless" varies from country...

and marital problems, including domestic violence

Domestic violence

Domestic violence, also known as domestic abuse, spousal abuse, battering, family violence, and intimate partner violence , is broadly defined as a pattern of abusive behaviors by one or both partners in an intimate relationship such as marriage, dating, family, or cohabitation...

. More than half of those diagnosed, 56 percent, were suffering from more than one disorder. The most common combination was post-traumatic stress disorder

Post-traumatic stress disorder

Posttraumaticstress disorder is a severe anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to any event that results in psychological trauma. This event may involve the threat of death to oneself or to someone else, or to one's own or someone else's physical, sexual, or psychological integrity,...

and depression

Clinical depression

Major depressive disorder is a mental disorder characterized by an all-encompassing low mood accompanied by low self-esteem, and by loss of interest or pleasure in normally enjoyable activities...

.

In January 2008, the U.S. Army reported that the rate of suicide among soldiers in 2007 was the highest since the Army started counting in 1980. There were 121 suicides in 2007, a 20-percent jump over the prior year. Also, there were around 2100 attempted suicides and self-injuries in 2007.

Time magazine reported on June 5, 2008:

Data contained in the Army's fifth Mental Health Advisory Team report indicate that, according to an anonymous survey of U.S. troops taken last fall, about 12% of combat troops in Iraq and 17% of those in Afghanistan are taking prescription
Prescription drug
A prescription medication is a licensed medicine that is regulated by legislation to require a medical prescription before it can be obtained. The term is used to distinguish it from over-the-counter drugs which can be obtained without a prescription...

antidepressants or sleeping pills
Hypnotic
Hypnotic drugs are a class of psychoactives whose primary function is to induce sleep and to be used in the treatment of insomnia and in surgical anesthesia...

to help them cope. ... About a third of soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq say they can't see a mental-health professional when they need to. When the number of troops in Iraq surged by 30,000 last year, the number of Army mental-health workers remained the same — about 200 — making counseling and care even tougher to get.

In the same article Time also reported on some of the reasons for the prescription drug use:

That imbalance between seeing the price of war up close and yet not feeling able to do much about it, the survey suggests, contributes to feelings of "intense fear, helplessness or horror" that plant the seeds of mental distress. "A friend was liquefied in the driver's position on a tank, and I saw everything", was a typical comment. Another: "A huge f______ bomb blew my friend's head off like 50 meters from me." Such indelible scenes — and wondering when and where the next one will happen — are driving thousands of soldiers to take antidepressants, military psychiatrists say. It's not hard to imagine why.

Concern has been expressed by mental health professionals about the effects on the emotional health and development of returning veterans' infants and children, due to the increased rates of interpersonal violence, posttraumatic stress, depression, and substance abuse that have been reported among these veterans. Moreover, the stressful effects of physical casualties and loss pose enormous stress for the primary caregiver that can adversely affect her or his parenting, as well as the couple's children directly. The mental health needs of military families in the aftermath of combat exposure and other war-related trauma have been thought likely to be inadequately addressed by the military health system that separates mental health care of the returning soldier from his or her family's care, the latter of whom is generally covered under a contracted, civilian managed-care system.

Iraqi insurgent casualties

In 2003, 597 insurgents were killed, according to the U.S. military. From January 2004 through December 2009 (not including May 2004 and March 2009), 23,984 insurgents were estimated to have been killed based on reports from Coalition soldiers on the frontlines. In the two missing months from the estimate, 652 were killed in May 2004, and 45 were killed in March 2009. In 2010, another 676 insurgents were killed. In January and March through October 2011, 451 insurgents were killed. Based on all of these estimates some 26,405 insurgents/militia were killed from 2003, up until late 2011.

However, this number could be an overestimate and may include some civilian fatalities, since there have been contradictions between the figures released by the U.S. military and those released by the Iraqi government. For example, the U.S. military's number of insurgents killed in 2005, is 3,247, which is in contrast to the Iraqi government's figure of 1,734. In 2007, 4,544 militants were killed according to the Iraqi ministries, while the U.S. military claimed 6,747 died. Also, in 2008, 2,028 insurgents were reported killed and in 2009, with the exception of the month of June, 488 were killed according to the Iraqi Defence Ministry

Ministry of Defence (Iraq)

The Ministry of Defence is the Iraq government agency responsible for Defence of Iraq. It is also involved with internal security.- Authority :...

.
These numbers are also not in line with the U.S. military estimate of some 3,984 killed in 2008 and 2009.

U.S. military- and Iraqi Defence Ministry-provided numbers, including suicide bombers

2011 — 451 (not including February & August)
2010 — 676
2009 — 488 (not including June)
2008 — 2,028
2007 — 6,747 (U.S. military), 4,544 (Iraqi Defence Ministry)
2006 — 3,902
2005 — 3,247 (U.S. military), 1,734 (Iraqi Defence Ministry)
2004 — 6,801
2003 — 603

In addition as of August 22, 2009, approximately 1,719 suicide-bombers

Suicide attack

A suicide attack is a type of attack in which the attacker expects or intends to die in the process.- Historical :...

had also been reported killed.

2009 — 73
2008 — 257
2007 — 442
2006 — 297
2005 — 478
2004 — 140
2003 (from August to December) — 32

Grand total — 21,221–26,405 insurgents dead

On September 28, 2006, an Al Qaeda leader claimed that 4,000 foreign insurgents had been killed in the war.

On June 6, 2008, an Iraqi Army official revealed that about 6,000 Al Qaeda fighters were among the insurgents killed since the start of the war up until April 2008.

Insurgent deaths, like civilian deaths, are hard to count or estimate. See:

See also the examples of undercounting shown in one of the sections below.

The Lancet surveys did not ask respondents if the dead they were reporting were combatants or not.

Contractor casualties

Their status as civilian is controversial. They are employees of U.S. government contractors and subcontractors, private military contractors, U.S. Department of Defense

United States Department of Defense

The United States Department of Defense is the U.S...

, etc. The contractors come from many nations including Iraq and the U.S.

A July 4, 2007, Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

article reports:

"More than 180,000 civilians — including Americans, foreigners and Iraqis — are working in Iraq under U.S. contracts, according to State and Defense department figures obtained by the Los Angeles Times. ...

"The numbers include at least 21,000 Americans, 43,000 foreign contractors and about 118,000 Iraqis — all employed in Iraq by U.S. tax dollars, according to the most recent government data."

A July 3, 2007, Reuters

Reuters

article reports:

"The department said it had recorded 990 deaths — 917 in Iraq and 73 in Afghanistan — by the end of March. Since then, according to incident logs tallied by Reuters in Baghdad and Kabul, at least 16 contractors have died in Iraq and two in Afghanistan. ...

"The Labor Department's statistics put the number of wounded in Iraq between March 1, 2003 and March 31, 2007 as 10,569. The corresponding figure for Afghanistan, from September 2001 to March 2007, is 2,428. ...

"Joseph McDermott, the Assistant Inspector General for Iraq, quoted Labor Department statistics as saying that of 900-plus contractors killed by the end of April, 224 were U.S. citizens."

From a New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

article published May 19, 2007:

"At least 146 contract workers were killed in Iraq in the first three months of the year, by far the highest number for any quarter since the war began in March 2003, according to the Labor Department, which processes death and injury claims for those working as United States government contractors in Iraq.

The April 30, 2007, quarterly report to Congress of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction

Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction

The Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction was created in October 2004 as the successor to the Coalition Provisional Authority Office of Inspector General . SIGIR is an independent government agency created by the Congress to provide oversight of the use – and potential...

states:

"Since Iraq reconstruction began, 916 death claims for civilian contractors working on U.S.-funded projects in Iraq have been filed. In the quarter ending March 31, 2007, the Department of Labor reported 146 new death claims. DoS reports that 16 U.S. civilians died in Iraq this quarter. Since the beginning of the U.S. reconstruction effort, 224 U.S. civilians have died in Iraq."

A February 23, 2007, Associated Press article reports that there are 120,000 contractors. It states that through the end of 2006 there have been 769 deaths and "3,367 injuries serious enough to require four or more days off the job."

A January 28, 2007, Houston Chronicle

Houston Chronicle

The Houston Chronicle is the largest daily newspaper in Texas, USA, headquartered in the Houston Chronicle Building in Downtown Houston. , it is the ninth-largest newspaper by circulation in the United States...

article reports that the Pentagon estimates around 100,000 contractors are currently in Iraq, and that the Pentagon does not track contractor deaths. The article reports: "Halliburton

Halliburton

Halliburton is the world's second largest oilfield services corporation with operations in more than 70 countries. It has hundreds of subsidiaries, affiliates, branches, brands and divisions worldwide and employs over 50,000 people....

's KBR is the largest military contractor operating in Iraq, with more than 50,000 employees and subcontractors working there, as well as in Kuwait

Kuwait

The State of Kuwait is a sovereign Arab state situated in the north-east of the Arabian Peninsula in Western Asia. It is bordered by Saudi Arabia to the south at Khafji, and Iraq to the north at Basra. It lies on the north-western shore of the Persian Gulf. The name Kuwait is derived from the...

and Afghanistan."

The article reports from Labor Department information that more than 770 civilian contractors of U.S.-based companies in Iraq died between March 2003 and December 31, 2006. 7,761 have been injured in Iraq. "How many of these civilian-contractor casualties were American citizens is unknown. Labor officials say they cannot provide a breakdown by nationality."

The article also reports:

The Labor Department has these numbers because it tracks workers' compensation claims by injured workers or families of slain contractors under the federal Defense Base Act. "Using employee time lost is a kind of a weird way to track casualties", Singer noted. "But it's part of the bizarre nature of this industry and the way it's been used in Iraq." Still, the Labor Department figures don't tell the full story.

An October 10, 2006, Reuters

Reuters

article reports, "Their number in Iraq is estimated at up to 100,000, from highly-trained former special forces soldiers to drivers, cooks, mechanics, plumbers, translators, electricians and laundry workers and other support personnel."

An April 2, 2004, Boston Globe

The Boston Globe

The Boston Globe is an American daily newspaper based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Boston Globe has been owned by The New York Times Company since 1993...

article reports: "Just how much the growing security burden in Iraq is costing US taxpayers is hard to gauge because few reconstruction contracts are made public and there is no official estimate of how many security specialists are active there. Analysts estimate that corporations have some 30,000 to 40,000 workers in Iraq"

Concerning the number of security-related contractors an April 19, 2004, New York Times

The New York Times

The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

article states: "But more and more, they give the appearance of private, for-profit militias — by several estimates, a force of roughly 20,000 on top of an American military presence of 130,000.

That article also reports: "Sorting out lines of authority and communication can be complex. Many security guards are hired as 'independent contractors' by companies that, in turn, are sub-contractors of larger security companies, which are themselves subcontractors of a prime contractor, which may have been hired by a United States agency."

An April 13, 2004, Robert Fisk

Robert Fisk

Robert Fisk is an English writer and journalist from Maidstone, Kent. As Middle East correspondent of The Independent, he has primarily been based in Beirut for more than 30 years. He has published a number of books and has reported on the United States's war in Afghanistan and the same country's...

article reports: "At least 18 000 mercenaries, many of them tasked to protect US troops and personnel, are now believed to be in Iraq."

The article reported: "At least 80 foreign mercenaries — security guards recruited from the United States, Europe and South Africa and working for American companies — have been killed in the past eight days in Iraq." The article noted that this was more than the roughly 70 coalition troops who were killed in the same period.

Iraqi healthcare deterioration

A November 11, 2006, Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

article reports:

The [Iraq] nation's health has deteriorated to a level not seen since the 1950s, said Joseph Chamie, former director of the U.N. Population Division

Commission on Population and Development

The Commission on Population and Development is one of the ten Functional Commissions of the United Nations Economic and Social Council. At its establishment by ECOSOC in October 1946, the Commission's name was "Population Commission" and in December 1994, was changed to "Commission on Population...

and an Iraq specialist. "They were at the forefront", he said, referring to healthcare just before the 1991 Persian Gulf War

Gulf War

. "Now they're looking more and more like a country in sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa as a geographical term refers to the area of the African continent which lies south of the Sahara. A political definition of Sub-Saharan Africa, instead, covers all African countries which are fully or partially located south of the Sahara...

A November 9, 2006, International Herald Tribune

International Herald Tribune

The International Herald Tribune is a widely read English language international newspaper. It combines the resources of its own correspondents with those of The New York Times and is printed at 38 sites throughout the world, for sale in more than 160 countries and territories...

article reported what Iraq's Health Minister

Council of Ministers of Iraq

The Cabinet of Iraq is the executive branch of the government of Iraq.The National Assembly of Iraq elects a President of State who along with two deputies form the Presidency Council. The Presidency Council appoints the Prime Minister who appoints the Council of Ministers, all of whom must be...

, Ali al-Shemari

Ali al-Shemari

Ali al-Shemari is an Iraqi politician from the Sadrist Movement who was the Health Minister of Iraq from May 20, 2006 until April 16, 2007.Al-Shemari's deputy, Hakim al-Zamili, and his security chief, Hamid al-Shammari, were arrested and tried in 2007 on claims they ran a death squad that attacked...

, said about the issue:

Al-Shemari said Iraq needed at least 10 years to rebuild its infrastructure, and that the medical situation in the country was "gloomy." There was a shortage of medical supplies, which sometimes took months to reach the country from abroad, while roadblocks prevented people from getting to hospitals, he said. No hospital has been built in Iraq since 1983, and the country's 15,000 available hospital beds were well short of the 80,000 beds needed. The minister also noted that many doctors had left the country. "We need help from anybody", Al-Shemari said.

Most Iraqi children suffering from psychological symptoms

Seventy percent of children are suffering from trauma-related symptoms according to a study of 10,000 primary school students in the Sha'ab

Sha'ab, Baghdad

Sha'ab is a neighborhood of Adhamiyah district, Baghdad, Iraq, It is subdivided to Sha'ab east , Sha'ab south , Sha'ab north ....

section of north Baghdad, conducted by the Iraqi Society of Psychiatrists and the World Health Organization

World Health Organization

The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on 7 April 1948, with headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health...

. "We're now finding an elevation of mental health disorders in children – emotional, conduct, peer, attention deficit", according to Iraqi psychiatrist Hashimi. "A number are even resulting in suicide."

Total Iraqi casualties

Estimates of the total number of Iraqi war-related deaths are highly disputed. National Public Radio has a bar chart with various estimates. Project Censored

Project Censored

has named the "corporate media blackout" of the number of Iraqi deaths caused by U.S. occupation (which it estimates at over one million) as the number-one censored story for 2009. In December 2007, the Iraqi government reported that there were five million orphan

Orphan

An orphan is a child permanently bereaved of or abandoned by his or her parents. In common usage, only a child who has lost both parents is called an orphan...

s in Iraq — almost half of the country's children.

Various estimates

In December 2005 President Bush said there were 30,000 Iraqi dead. White House spokesman Scott McClellan

Scott McClellan

Scott McClellan is a former White House Press Secretary for President George W. Bush, and author of a controversial No. 1 New York Times bestseller about the Bush Administration titled What Happened. He replaced Ari Fleischer as press secretary in July 2003 and served until May 10, 2006...

later said it was "not an official government estimate", and was based on media reports.

The United Nations reported that 34,452 violent civilian deaths occurred in 2006, based on data from morgues, hospitals, and municipal authorities across Iraq.

For 2006, a January 2, 2007, Associated Press article reports: "The tabulation by the Iraqi ministries of Health, Defence and Interior, showed that 14,298 civilians, 1,348 police and 627 soldiers had been killed in the violence that raged across the country last year. The Associated Press figure, gleaned from daily news reports from Baghdad, arrived at a total of 13,738 deaths." The Australian

The Australian

The Australian is a broadsheet newspaper published in Australia from Monday to Saturday each week since 14 July 1964. The editor in chief is Chris Mitchell, the editor is Clive Mathieson and the 'editor-at-large' is Paul Kelly....

reports in a January 2, 2007, article: "A figure of 3700 civilian deaths in October '[2006]', the latest tally given by the UN based on data from the Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue, was branded exaggerated by the Iraqi Government." Iraqi government estimates include "people killed in bombings and shootings but not deaths classed as 'criminal'." Also, they "include no deaths among the many civilians wounded in attacks who may die later from wounds. Nor do they include many people kidnapped whose fate remains unknown."

A June 25, 2006, Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

article, "War's Iraqi Death Toll Tops 50,000", reported that their estimate of violent deaths consisted "mostly of civilians" but probably 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." Here is how the Times got its number: "The Baghdad morgue received 30,204 bodies from 2003 through mid-2006, while the Health Ministry said it had documented 18,933 deaths from 'military clashes' and 'terrorist attacks' from April 5, 2004, to June 1, 2006. Together, the toll reaches 49,137. However, samples obtained from local health departments in other provinces show an undercount that brings the total well beyond 50,000. The figure also does not include deaths outside Baghdad in the first year of the invasion."

Iraq Body Count

The Iraq Body Count (IBC) project has recorded the numbers of civilians killed in violence since the 2003 invasion of Iraq based on a "comprehensive survey of commercial media and NGO-based reports, along with official records that have been released into the public sphere. Reports range from specific, incident based accounts to figures from hospitals, morgues, and other documentary data-gathering agencies." Current IBC figures, to December 2010, place the number of civilians killed at 99,151–108,234. The IBC was also given access to the WikiLeaks

Wikileaks

WikiLeaks is an international self-described not-for-profit organisation that publishes submissions of private, secret, and classified media from anonymous news sources, news leaks, and whistleblowers. Its website, launched in 2006 under The Sunshine Press organisation, claimed a database of more...

disclosures of the Iraq War Logs and has estimated that these documents show the total number of Iraqi deaths since the 2003 invasion to be over 150,000, with about 80% being civilian.

Iraq Living Conditions Survey

A study commissioned by the United Nations Development Programme

United Nations Development Programme

The United Nations Development Programme is the United Nations' global development network. It advocates for change and connects countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life. UNDP operates in 177 countries, working with nations on their own solutions to...

(UNDP), called the Iraq Living Conditions Survey (ILCS), 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 did not attempt to measure what portion of its estimate was made up of civilians or combatants. It would include Iraqi military killed during the invasion, as well as "insurgents" or other fighters thereafter. This study has been criticized for various reasons. For more info see the section in Lancet surveys of Iraq War casualties that compares the Lancet and UNDP ILCS studies.

Iraqiyun estimate

In the introduction of the report for the 2006 Lancet survey are listed some previous death estimates. One was the Iraqiyun estimate: "An Iraqi non-governmental organisation, Iraqiyun, estimated 128,000 deaths from the time of the invasion until July, 2005, by use of various sources, including household interviews." The reference listed in the Lancet report: "NGO Coordination Committee in Iraq. Iraq emergency situation, final report. Baghdad: NGO Coordination Committee in Iraq, 2006." A July 2005 United Press International

United Press International

United Press International is a once-major international news agency, whose newswires, photo, news film and audio services provided news material to thousands of newspapers, magazines and radio and television stations for most of the twentieth century...

(UPI) article said the number came from the chairman of the Iraqiyun humanitarian organization in Baghdad, Dr. Hatim al-'Alwani. He said 55 percent of those killed were women, and children aged 12 and under. The UPI article reported: "Iraqiyun obtained data from relatives and families of the deceased, as well as from Iraqi hospitals in all the country's provinces. The 128,000 figure only includes those whose relatives have been informed of their deaths and does not include those were abducted, assassinated or simply disappeared." A 2010 book by Nicolas Davies reported the Iraqiyun estimate, and that Iraqiyun was affiliated with the political party of Interim President Ghazi Al-Yawer

Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer

Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawar is an Iraqi political figure. He was a Vice President of Iraq under the Iraqi Transitional Government from 2005 to 2006, and was Acting President of Iraq under the Iraqi Interim Government from 2004 to 2005....

. Davies wrote: "The report specified that it included only confirmed deaths reported to relatives, omitting significant numbers of people who had simply disappeared without trace amid the violence and chaos." A peer reviewed article by Professor Michael Spagat notes that "a single UPI article is the sole basis for the claim that a survey was done," and that no official report on this survey has ever surfaced. The paper also notes that the UPI article is repeating claims made in a report by Mafkarat al-Islam, or Islam Memo, a source that has been referred to by Middle East historian Juan Cole as "the radical Sunni Arab newspaper", and which a US State Department report has described as "perhaps the most unreliable source of 'news' on the internet", describing how it repeatedly reported that large numbers of US toops had been killed when few or none had been killed.

The Associated Press and Health Ministry. More information

The Associated Press reported that the Health Ministry of the Iraqi government

Politics of Iraq

The politics of Iraq takes place in a framework of a federal parliamentary representative democratic republic. It is a multi-party system whereby the executive power is exercised by the Prime Minister of the Council of Ministers as the head of government, as well as the President of Iraq, and...

had recorded 87,215 violent deaths of Iraqi citizens since the beginning of 2005. The data was in the form of a list of yearly totals for death certificates issued for violent deaths by hospitals and morgues between January 1, 2005, and February 28, 2009. The number excludes thousands of people who are missing and civilians who were buried in the chaos of war without official notice. If included, those would raise the number of dead for that period by 10 to 20 percent according to the government official who provided the data to The Associated Press.

The Associated Press used this data to estimate that more than 110,600 Iraqis had been killed since the start of the war to April 2009. This number is derived by combining the Health Ministry tally of 87,215 with counts of casualties for 2003–2004, and after March 1, 2009, from hospital sources and media reports, citing Iraq Body Count as its main source for this data. The AP article stated that it had "reviewed the Iraq Body Count analysis and confirmed its conclusions by sifting the data and consulting experts. The AP also interviewed experts involved with previous studies, prominent Iraq analysts and provincial and medical officials to determine that the new tally was credible."

The AP also reported: "Experts said the count constitutes an important baseline, albeit an incomplete one. Richard Brennan, who has done mortality research in Congo and Kosovo

Kosovo

Kosovo is a region in southeastern Europe. Part of the Ottoman Empire for more than five centuries, later the Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Metohija within Serbia...

, said it is likely a 'gross underestimate' because many deaths go unrecorded in war zones. The Iraqi Body Count numbers are likely even more incomplete, given that many killings occurred in incidents journalists were unaware of or in inaccessible areas. Mass graves have been turning up as improved security allows patrols in formerly off-limits areas, but how many remain will never be known."

Iraq Family Health Survey

The Iraq Family Health Survey published in the New England Journal of Medicine

New England Journal of Medicine

The New England Journal of Medicine is an English-language peer-reviewed medical journal published by the Massachusetts Medical Society. It describes itself as the oldest continuously published medical journal in the world.-History:...

surveyed 9,345 households across Iraq and was carried out in 2006 and 2007. It estimated 151,000 deaths due to violence (95% uncertainty range, 104,000 to 223,000) from March 2003 through June 2006.

The study was done by the "Iraq Family Health Survey Study Group", a collaborative effort of six organizations: the Federal Ministry of Health, Baghdad

Baghdad

Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...

; Kurdistan Ministry of Planning, Erbil

Arbil

Arbil / Hewlêr is the fourth largest city in Iraq after Baghdad, Basra and Mosul...

; Kurdistan Ministry of Health, Erbil; Central Organization for Statistics and Information Technology, Baghdad; World Health Organization Iraq office, Amman

Amman

Amman is the capital of Jordan. It is the country's political, cultural and commercial centre and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. The Greater Amman area has a population of 2,842,629 as of 2010. The population of Amman is expected to jump from 2.8 million to almost...

, Jordan; World Health Organization, Geneva

Geneva

Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...

Opinion Research Business survey of Iraqi war deaths in August 2007

A September 14, 2007, estimate by Opinion Research Businss

ORB survey of Iraq War casualties

On Friday, 14 September 2007, ORB , an independent polling agency located in London, published estimates of the total war casualties in Iraq since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. At over 1.2 million deaths , this estimate is the highest number published so far...

(ORB), an independent British polling agency, suggests that the total Iraqi violent death toll due to the Iraq War since the U.S.-led invasion is in excess of 1.2 million (1,220,580). Although higher than the 2006 Lancet estimate through June 2006, these results, which were based on a survey of 1,499 adults in Iraq from August 12–19, 2007, are more or less consistent with the figures that were published in the Lancet study.

On January 28, 2008, ORB published an update based on additional work carried out in rural areas of Iraq. Some 600 additional interviews were undertaken and as a result of this the death estimate was revised to 1,033,000 with a given range of 946,000 to 1,120,000.

Participants of the ORB survey were asked the following question:

"How many members of your household, if any, have died as a result of the conflict in Iraq since 2003 (ie as a result of violence rather than a natural death such as old age)? Please note that I mean those who were actually living under your roof."

The revised results were

Number of deaths in household	Percent of responders
None	72%
One	14%
Two	3%
Three	1%
Four or more	"more than zero but less than 0.5%"
Don't know	2%
No answer	8%

This ORB estimate has been strongly criticised as exaggerated and ill-founded in peer reviewed literature

D3 Systems poll in early 2007

From February 25 to March 5, 2007, D3 Systems http://www.d3systems.com conducted a poll for the BBC

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

, ABC News

ABC News

ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...

, ARD

ARD (broadcaster)

ARD is a joint organization of Germany's regional public-service broadcasters...

and USA Today

USA Today

.

ABC News

ABC News

ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...

reported: "One in six says someone in their own household has been harmed. ... 53 percent of Iraqis say a close friend or immediate family member has been hurt in the current violence. That ranges from three in 10 in the Kurdish provinces to, in Baghdad, nearly eight in 10."

The methodology was described thus: "This poll for ABC News, USA Today, the BBC and ARD was conducted February 25–March 5, 2007, through in-person interviews with a random national sample of 2,212 Iraqi adults, including oversamples in Anbar province, Basra

Basra

Basra is the capital of Basra Governorate, in southern Iraq near Kuwait and Iran. It had an estimated population of two million as of 2009...

city, Kirkuk

Kirkuk

Kirkuk is a city in Iraq and the capital of Kirkuk Governorate.It is located in the Iraqi governorate of Kirkuk, north of the capital, Baghdad...

and the Sadr City

Sadr City

Sadr City is a suburb district of the city of Baghdad, Iraq. It was built in 1959 by Prime Minister Abdul Karim Qassim and later unofficially renamed Sadr City after deceased Shia leader Mohammad Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr....

section of Baghdad. The results have a 2.5-point error margin. Field work by D3 Systems of Vienna, Virginia

Vienna, Virginia

Vienna is a town in Fairfax County, Virginia, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, it had a population of 15,687. Significantly more people live in zip codes with the Vienna postal addresses bordered approximately by Interstate 66 on the south, Interstate 495 on the east, Route 7 to...

, and KA Research Ltd. of Istanbul

Istanbul

Istanbul , historically known as Byzantium and Constantinople , is the largest city of Turkey. Istanbul metropolitan province had 13.26 million people living in it as of December, 2010, which is 18% of Turkey's population and the 3rd largest metropolitan area in Europe after London and...

."

There was a field staff of 150 Iraqis in all. That included 103 interviewers, interviewing selected respondents at 458 locales across the country. "This poll asked about nine kinds of violence (car bombs, snipers or crossfire, kidnappings, fighting among opposing groups or abuse of civilians by various armed forces)."

Question 35 asked:

"Have you or an immediate family member - by which I mean someone living in this household – been physically harmed by the violence that is occurring in the country at this time?"

Here are the results in percentages:

Groups	Yes	No
All	17	83
Sunni	21	79
Shiite	17	83
Kurdish	7	93

17% of respondents reported that at least one member of the household had been "physically harmed by the violence that is occurring in the country at this time." The survey did not ask whether multiple household members had been harmed.

Iraq Health Minister estimate in November 2006

In early November 2006 Iraq's Health Minister

Council of Ministers of Iraq

Ali al-Shemari

said that he estimated between 100,000 and 150,000 people had been killed since the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion. The Taipei Times

Taipei Times

The Taipei Times is one of the three major English-language newspapers in the Republic of China the other two being the Taiwan News and The China Post...

reported on his methodology: "Al-Shemari said on Thursday [, November 9, 2006,] that he based his figure on an estimate of 100 bodies per day brought to morgues and hospitals – though such a calculation would come out closer to 130,000 in total." The Washington Post

The Washington Post

reported: "As al-Shemari issued the startling new estimate, the head of the Baghdad central morgue said Thursday he was receiving as many as 60 violent death victims each day at his facility alone. Dr. Abdul-Razzaq al-Obaidi said those deaths did not include victims of violence whose bodies were taken to the city's many hospital morgues or those who were removed from attack scenes by relatives and quickly buried according to Muslim custom."

From a November 9, 2006, International Herald Tribune

International Herald Tribune

article:

"Each day we lost 100 persons, that means per month 3,000, per year it's 36,000, plus or minus 10 percent", al-Shemari said. "So by three years, 120,000, half year 20,000, that means 140,000, plus or minus 10 percent", he said, explaining how he came to the figures. "This includes all Iraqis killed — police, ordinary people, children", he said, adding that people who were kidnapped and later found dead were also included in his estimate. He said the figures were compiled by counting bodies brought to "forensic institutes" or hospitals.

From a November 11, 2006, Taipei Times

Taipei Times

The Taipei Times is one of the three major English-language newspapers in the Republic of China the other two being the Taiwan News and The China Post...

article:

An official with the ministry also confirmed the figure yesterday [November 10, 2006], but later said that the estimated deaths ranged between 100,000 and 150,000. "The minister was misquoted. He said between 100,000-150,000 people were killed in three-and-a-half years", the official said.

2006 Excess Mortality Study

The October 2006 Lancet study estimated total excess deaths up to July 2006. Total deaths (civilian and non-civilian) include all additional deaths due to increased lawlessness, degraded infrastructure, poorer healthcare, etc.. The survey estimated 654,965 excess deaths related to the war. The 2006 study involved surveys between May 20 and July 10, 2006. More households were surveyed than during the 2004 study, allowing for a 95% confidence interval

Confidence interval

In statistics, a confidence interval is a particular kind of interval estimate of a population parameter and is used to indicate the reliability of an estimate. It is an observed interval , in principle different from sample to sample, that frequently includes the parameter of interest, if the...

of 392,979 to 942,636 excess Iraqi deaths. The result was disputed by President Bush, epidemiologists, demographers, the Iraq Body Count, and many others, based both on the number of deaths and the alleged methodology.

Although the British Government initially tried to dispute the accuracy of the Lancet survey, the U.K. Ministry of Defence

Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom)

The Ministry of Defence is the United Kingdom government department responsible for implementation of government defence policy and is the headquarters of the British Armed Forces....

's chief scientific adviser wrote in an email on the day of publication that the survey's methods were "close to best practice" and the study design was "robust". An October 12, 2006, San Francisco Chronicle

San Francisco Chronicle

thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...

article reported: "Asked at the news conference what he thinks the number is now, Bush said: 'I stand by the figure a lot of innocent people have lost their life.' At a separate Pentagon briefing, Gen. George Casey, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said that the [Lancet] figure 'seems way, way beyond any number that I have seen. I've not seen a number higher than 50,000. And so I don't give it that much credibility at all'."

2004 Excess Mortality Study

The October 2004 Lancet study done by public health experts from Johns Hopkins University

Johns Hopkins University

The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...

and published on October 29, 2004, in The Lancet

The Lancet

The Lancet is a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal. It is one of the world's best known, oldest, and most respected general medical journals...

medical journal, estimated that 100,000 "excess" Iraqi deaths from all causes had occurred since the U.S. 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 non-combatants, 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 988 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 it included 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.

The study 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

Myocardial infarction

Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...

, cerebrovascular

Cerebrovascular disease

Cerebrovascular disease is a group of brain dysfunctions related to disease of the blood vessels supplying the brain. Hypertension is the most important cause; it damages the blood vessel lining, endothelium, exposing the underlying collagen where platelets aggregate to initiate a repairing process...

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.

Undercounting

Most studies estimating the casualties due to the war in Iraq acknowledge various reasons why the estimates and counts may be low.

On February 24, 2009, Morning Edition

Morning Edition

Morning Edition is an American radio news program produced and distributed by National Public Radio . It airs weekday mornings and runs for two hours, and many stations repeat one or both hours. The show feeds live from 05:00 to 09:00 ET, with feeds and updates as required until noon...

discussed what a Baghdad central morgue statistics office worker reported to them:

the number of deaths the morgue registers never corresponds with numbers from the Ministry of Health
Council of Ministers of Iraq
The Cabinet of Iraq is the executive branch of the government of Iraq.The National Assembly of Iraq elects a President of State who along with two deputies form the Presidency Council. The Presidency Council appoints the Prime Minister who appoints the Council of Ministers, all of whom must be...

or the Ministry of Interior
Ministry of Interior (Iraq)
The Ministry of Interior of Iraq handles policing and border control in Iraq. The MoI consists of several elements, including the Iraqi Police, Highway Patrol, Traffic Department, Emergency Response Unit, Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit, and Department of Border Enforcement...

. "They do it on purpose", he says. "I would go home and look at the news. The ministry would say 10 people got killed all over Iraq, while I had received in that day more than 50 dead bodies just in Baghdad. It's always been like that — they would say one thing but the reality was much worse."

A January 31, 2008 Perspective in the New England Journal of Medicine

New England Journal of Medicine

contains the following discussion of undercounting Iraqi civilian casualties in household surveys:

" ... sometimes it was
problematic or too dangerous to
enter a cluster of households,
which might well result in an
undercount; data from the Iraq
Body Count on the distribution
of deaths among provinces were
used to calculate estimates in these
instances. If the clustering of violent
deaths wasn’t accurately captured,
that could also increase uncertainty.

The sampling frame was based
on a 2004 count, but the population
has been changing rapidly
and dramatically because of sectarian
violence, the flight of
refugees, and overall population
migration. Another source of bias
in household surveys is underreporting
due to the dissolution
of some households after a death,
so that no one remains to tell the
former inhabitants’ story. "

A January 10, 2008, Washington Post article reported: "Previous research has shown that household surveys typically miss 30 to 50 percent of deaths. One reason is that some families that have suffered violent deaths leave the survey area. ... Some people are kidnapped and disappear, and others turn up months or years later in mass graves. Some are buried or otherwise disposed of without being recorded. In particularly violent areas, local governments have effectively ceased to function, and there are ineffective channels for collecting and passing information between hospitals, morgues and the central government."

On November 10, 2006, The Washington Post reported: "Accurate figures on the number of people who have died in the Iraq conflict have long been the subject of debate. Police and hospitals often give widely conflicting figures of those killed in major bombings. In addition, death figures are reported through multiple channels by government agencies that function with varying efficiency."

The October 2006 Lancet study states: "Aside from Bosnia, we can find no conflict situation where passive surveillance [used by the IBC] recorded more than 20% of the deaths measured by population-based methods [used in the Lancet studies]. In several outbreaks, disease and death recorded by facility-based methods underestimated events by a factor of ten or more when compared with population-based estimates. Between 1960 and 1990, newspaper accounts of political deaths in Guatemala

Guatemala

Guatemala is a country in Central America bordered by Mexico to the north and west, the Pacific Ocean to the southwest, Belize to the northeast, the Caribbean to the east, and Honduras and El Salvador to the southeast...

correctly reported over 50% of deaths in years of low violence but less than 5% in years of highest violence." The report describes no other specific examples except for this study of Guatemala.

The Lancet reference used is to Patrick Ball

Patrick Ball

Patrick Ball is a scientist, technologist, computer programmer, and an important figure in the global human rights movement. According to the New York Times Magazine, he is "one of the most admired figures in the field." He leads the Human Rights Program at Benetech, the Silicon Valley nonprofit...

, Paul Kobrak, and Herbert F. Spirer and their 1999 book, State Violence in Guatemala, 1960–1996: A Quantitative Reflection. From the introduction:

"The CIIDH database consists of cases culled from direct testimonies and documentary and press sources."

They report in chapter seven:

"Figure 7.1 shows that in the CIIDH database, most of the information for human rights violations prior to 1977 comes from press sources. ... Approximately 10,890 cases were coded from the newspapers. Sixty-three percent of the press cases were taken from Prensa Libre

Prensa Libre

Prensa Libre is a Guatemalan newspaper published in Guatemala City by Prensa Libre, S.A. and distributed nationwide. It was formerly the most widely circulated newspaper in the country and as of 2007 it has the second-widest circulation. It is considered a local newspaper of record. It was founded...

, 10 percent from El Gráfico, 8 percent from La Hora and El Impacto respectively, and 6 percent from El Imparcial. The remaining 5 percent is made up by eight other newspapers."

But they reported that in later, more violent years:

"When the level of violence increased dramatically in the late 1970s and early 1980s, numbers of reported violations in the press stayed very low. In 1981, one of the worst years of state violence, the numbers fall towards zero. The press reported almost none of the rural violence."

There is a list of figures, tables, and charts in the book that can be used to calculate what percentage of the deaths were reported by the 13 Guatemalan newspapers for each year when compared to testimonies of witnesses compiled by popular organizations.

Juan Cole

Juan Cole

John Ricardo I. "Juan" Cole is an American scholar, public intellectual, and historian of the modern Middle East and South Asia. He is Richard P. Mitchell Collegiate Professor of History at the University of Michigan. As a commentator on Middle Eastern affairs, he has appeared in print and on...

wrote in an October 11, 2006, article: "There is heavy fighting almost every day at Ramadi

Ramadi

Ramadi is a city in central Iraq, about west of Baghdad. It is the capital of Al Anbar Governorate.-History:Ramadi is located in a fertile, irrigated, alluvial plain.The Ottoman Empire founded Ramadi in 1869...

in al-Anbar province, among guerrillas, townspeople, tribes, Marines and Iraqi police and army. We almost never get a report of these skirmishes and we almost never are told about Iraqi casualties in Ramadi."

A July 28, 2004, opinion piece by Robert Fisk

Robert Fisk

published by The Independent

The Independent

The Independent is a British national morning newspaper published in London by Independent Print Limited, owned by Alexander Lebedev since 2010. It is nicknamed the Indy, while the Sunday edition, The Independent on Sunday, is the Sindy. Launched in 1986, it is one of the youngest UK national daily...

reports that "some families bury their dead without notifying the authorities."

Stephen Soldz

Stephen Soldz

Stephen Soldz, Ph.D., born November 19, 1952, is a psychoanalyst, clinical psychologist, professor, and anti-war activist.He has received media attention as a vocal critic regarding allegations of the use of psychological torture by the U.S...

, who runs the website "Iraq Occupation and Resistance Report", wrote in a February 5, 2006, article: "Of course, in conditions of active rebellion, the safer areas accessible to Western reporters are likely to be those under US/Coalition control, where deaths are, in turn, likely to be due to insurgent attacks. Areas of insurgent control, which are likely to be subject to US and Iraqi government attack, for example most of Anbar province, are simply off-limits to these reporters. Thus, the realities of reporting imply that reporters will be witness to a larger fraction of deaths due to insurgents and a lesser proportion of deaths due to US and Iraqi government forces."

A June 25, 2006, Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles Times

article reports: "Many more Iraqis are believed to have been killed but not counted because of serious lapses in recording deaths. ... The [Los Angeles] Times attempted to reach a comprehensive figure by obtaining statistics from the Baghdad morgue and the Health Ministry and checking those numbers against a sampling of local health departments for possible undercounts."

An October 19, 2006, Washington Post article reports: "The deaths reported by officials and published in the news media represent only a fraction of the thousands of mutilated bodies winding up in Baghdad's overcrowded morgue each month. ... Bodies are increasingly being dumped in and around Baghdad in fields staked out by individual Shiite militias and Sunni insurgent groups. Iraqi security forces often refuse to go to the dumping grounds, leaving the precise number of bodies in those sites unknown. Civilian deaths, unlike those of American troops, often go unrecorded."

On October 11, 2006, Middle East Professor Juan Cole

Juan Cole

noted:

"But last May [2006], the government authorities in Basra
Basra
Basra is the capital of Basra Governorate, in southern Iraq near Kuwait and Iran. It had an estimated population of two million as of 2009...

came out and admitted that security had collapsed in the city and that for the previous month, one person had been assassinated every hour. Now, that is 24 dead a day, just from political assassination. Apparently these persons were being killed in faction fighting among Shiite militias and Marsh Arab
Marsh Arabs
The Marsh Arabs , also known as the Maʻdān , are inhabitants of the Tigris-Euphrates marshlands in the south and east of Iraq and along the Iranian border....

tribes. We never saw any of those 24 deaths a day reported in the Western press. And we never see any deaths from Basra reported in the wire services on a daily basis even now. Has security improved since May? No one seems even to be reporting on it, yes or no."

The Australian

reports in a January 2, 2007, article that Iraqi government casualty estimates include "people killed in bombings and shootings but not deaths classed as 'criminal'." Also, they "include no deaths among the many civilians wounded in attacks who may die later from wounds. Nor do they include many people kidnapped whose fate remains unknown."

In a November 7, 2004, press release concerning the October 2004 Lancet study the Iraq Body Count project

Iraq Body Count project

(IBC) states: "We have always been quite explicit that our own total is certain to be an underestimate of the true position, because of gaps in reporting or recording".

One of the sources used by the media are morgues. Only the central Baghdad area morgue has released figures consistently. While that is the largest morgue in Iraq and in the most consistently violent area, the absence of comprehensive morgue figures elsewhere leads to undercounting. IBC makes it clear that, due to these issues, its count will almost certainly be below the full toll in its 'Quick FAQ' on its homepage.

Quote from an IBC note: "The Iraq Body Count (IBC) estimate for x350, like that for x334, was made possible by examination of the detailed data supplied to the Associated Press (AP) by the morgues surveyed in APs 23 May 2004 survey of Iraqi morgues."

That May 23, 2004, Associated Press article points out the lack of morgue data from many areas of Iraq. Also, it states: "The [Baghdad] figure does not include most people killed in big terrorist bombings, Hassan said. The cause of death in such cases is obvious so bodies are usually not taken to the morgue, but given directly to victims' families. Also, the bodies of killed fighters from groups like the al-Mahdi Army

Mahdi Army

The Mahdi Army, also known as the Mahdi Militia or Jaish al-Mahdi , was an Iraqi paramilitary force created by the Iraqi Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in June 2003....

are rarely taken to morgues."

Systematic underreporting by U.S.

An April 2005 article by The Independent

The Independent

reports:

"A week before she was killed by a suicide bomber, humanitarian worker Marla Ruzicka forced military commanders to admit they did keep records of Iraqi civilians killed by US forces. ... in an essay Ms Ruzicka wrote a week before her death on Saturday and published yesterday, the 28-year-old revealed that a Brigadier General told her it was 'standard operating procedure' for US troops to file a report when they shoot a non-combatant. She obtained figures for the number of civilians killed in Baghdad between 28 February and 5 April [2005], and discovered that 29 had been killed in firefights involving US forces and insurgents. This was four times the number of Iraqi police killed."

The December 2006 report of the Iraq Study Group

Iraq Study Group

The Iraq Study group , was a ten-person bipartisan panel appointed on March 15, 2006, by the United States Congress, that was charged with assessing the situation in Iraq and the US-led Iraq War and making policy recommendations...

(ISG) found that the United States has filtered out reports of violence in order to disguise its policy failings in Iraq. A December 7, 2006, McClatchy Newspapers

The McClatchy Company

The McClatchy Company is a publicly traded American publishing company based in Sacramento, California. It operates 30 daily newspapers in 15 states and has an average weekday circulation of 2.2 million and Sunday circulation of 2.8 million...

article reports that the ISG found that U.S. officials reported 93 attacks or significant acts of violence on one day in July 2006, yet "a careful review of the reports for that single day brought to light more than 1,100 acts of violence." The article further reports:

"The finding confirmed a September 8 McClatchy Newspapers report that U.S. officials excluded scores of people killed in car bombings and mortar attacks from tabulations measuring the results of a drive to reduce violence in Baghdad. By excluding that data, U.S. officials were able to boast that deaths from sectarian violence in the Iraqi capital had declined by more than 52 percent between July and August, McClatchy newspapers reported."

From the ISG report itself: "A murder of an Iraqi is not necessarily counted as an attack. If we cannot determine the source of a sectarian attack, that assault does not make it into the database. A roadside bomb or a rocket or mortar attack that doesn't hurt U.S. personnel doesn't count."

According to Project Censored

Project Censored

, the undercounting and underreporting of Iraqi casualties has led to a widespread belief among the U.S. public that very few Iraqis have been killed, with an average "estimate" of under 10,000 reported by an Associated Press poll in February 2007. This survey was, itself, not reported in the mass media, even by the Associated Press.

Casualties caused by criminal and political violence

In May 2004, Associated Press completed a survey of the morgues in Baghdad

Baghdad

Baghdad is the capital of Iraq, as well as the coterminous Baghdad Governorate. The population of Baghdad in 2011 is approximately 7,216,040...

and surrounding provinces. The survey tallied violent deaths from May 1, 2003, when President Bush

George W. Bush

George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....

declared an end to major combat operations, through April 30, 2004.

From the AP article:

In Baghdad, a city of about 5.6 million, 4,279 people were recorded killed in the 12 months through April 30 [2004], according to figures provided by Kais Hassan, director of statistics at Baghdad's Medicolegal Institute, which administers the city's morgues. "Before the war, there was a strong government, strong security. There were a lot of police on the streets and there were no illegal weapons", he said during an AP reporter's visit to the morgue. "Now there are few controls. There is crime, revenge killings, so much violence." The figure does not include most people killed in big terrorist bombings, Hassan said. The cause of death in such cases is obvious so bodies are usually not taken to the morgue, but given directly to victims' families. Also, the bodies of killed fighters from groups like the al-Mahdi Army are rarely taken to morgues.

Accidental trauma deaths from car accidents, falls, etc. are not included in the numbers. The article reports that the numbers translate to 76 killings per 100,000 people in Baghdad, compared to 39 in Bogotá

Bogotá

Bogotá, Distrito Capital , from 1991 to 2000 called Santa Fé de Bogotá, is the capital, and largest city, of Colombia. It is also designated by the national constitution as the capital of the department of Cundinamarca, even though the city of Bogotá now comprises an independent Capital district...

, Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

, 7.5 in New York City, and 2.4 in neighboring Jordan

Jordan

. The article states that there were 3.0 killings per 100,000 people in Baghdad in 2002 (the year before the war).

Morgues surveyed in other parts of Iraq also reported large increases in the number of homicides. Karbala

Karbala

Karbala is a city in Iraq, located about southwest of Baghdad. Karbala is the capital of Karbala Governorate, and has an estimated population of 572,300 people ....

, south of Baghdad, increased 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

Tikrit

Tikrit is a town in Iraq, located 140 km northwest of Baghdad on the Tigris river . The town, with an estimated population in 2002 of about 260,000 is the administrative center of the Salah ad Din Governorate.-Ancient times:...

, 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

Kirkuk

Kirkuk is a city in Iraq and the capital of Kirkuk Governorate.It is located in the Iraqi governorate of Kirkuk, north of the capital, Baghdad...

, the rate had increased from 3 per month in 2002 to 34 per month in the survey period.

External links and references

(Additional links not found in the two reference sections higher up.)

U.S. military casualties only

"Faces of the Fallen", The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...

database of all U.S. service-member casualties from Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) and Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF)
"A Look At Those Who Died in Iraq", The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

interactive
U.S. Military Casualties, United States Department of Defense
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense is the U.S...
"Honor the Fallen", database of U.S. troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
"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
U.S. Military Personnel Wounded in Iraq & Afghanistan: A Running Log.
"U.S. Casualties of War as Announced by the Department of Defense 2003–2007". A list of U.S. military casualties by date order beginning 2003 and updated daily.
American Widow Project - Resources.
"Purple hearts" - documentary interviews U.S. military casualties. In English with very short section in Dutch that is missing English subtitles.
The Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Wellbutrin, Celexa, Effexor, Valium, Klonopin, Ativan, Restoril, Xanax, Adderall, Ritalin, Haldol, Risperdal, Seroquel, Ambien, Lunesta, Elavil, Trazodone War. Feb 6, 2011. By Jennifer Senior. New York
New York (magazine)
New York is a weekly magazine principally concerned with the life, culture, politics, and style of New York City. Founded by Milton Glaser and Clay Felker in 1968 as a competitor to The New Yorker, it was brasher and less polite than that magazine, and established itself as a cradle of New...

magazine.

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

CNN list of U.S. & Coalition Casualties in Iraq since 2003
"Iraq War Coalition Fatalities", Flash graphic of Iraq map showing Coalition casualties over time with location, obleek.com
Casualty Monitor - Tracking the War in Iraq
USAID: We don't know how many contractors we have working for us in Iraq. "ePluribus Media has repeatedly filed FOIA requests on a range of topics related to contractors in Iraq."

Iraqi casualties only

Les Roberts seminar at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, on April 13, 2005; uploaded in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5vD_Ub2K_c on October 25, 2006.
Conetta, Carl (February 18, 2004). "Disappearing the Dead: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Idea of a "New Warfare" Project on Defense Alternatives.
Schwartz, Michael (July 6, 2007). "War on Iraq: Is the United States Killing 10,000 Iraqis Every Month? Or Is It More?". AlterNet
AlterNet
AlterNet, a project of the non-profit Independent Media Institute, is a progressive/liberal activist news service. Launched in 1998, AlterNet now claims a readership of over 3 million visitors per month .AlterNet publishes original content as well as journalism from a wide variety of other sources...

.
"Iraqi Civilian Deaths Increase Dramatically After Invasion". Johns Hopkins School of Public Health. October 28, 2004.
Korb, Lawrence J.; Biddle, Stephen (September 25, 2007). "Violence by the Numbers in Iraq: Sound Data or Shaky Statistics?". Council on Foreign Relations
Council on Foreign Relations
The Council on Foreign Relations is an American nonprofit nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs...

.
Iraqi Casualty Monitor - Tracking the cost of war
Estimating Mortality in Civil Conflicts: Lessons from Iraq. A June 2007 working paper by the Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters
Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters
The Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters is a research unit of the Université catholique de Louvain . It is situated at the School of Public Health of the Brussels campus of the university....
Iraqimemorial.org - Online database of Artist's proposals and projects as memorials to the civilian casualties from the Iraq war

Casualty photos

Kamiya, Gary (August 23, 2005). "Iraq: The Unseen War". Salon.com
Salon.com
Salon.com, part of Salon Media Group , often just called Salon, is an online liberal magazine, with content updated each weekday. Salon was founded by David Talbot and launched on November 20, 1995. It was the internet's first online-only commercial publication. The magazine focuses on U.S...

. The photos.
"The Reach of War. A Deadly Search for Missing Soldiers". Slideshow narrated by the photographer Michael Kamber. May 23, 2007. The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...

. Article: "As Comrades Search, Fatal Bomb Wreaks Havoc". By Damien Cave.
Archive of articles and many photographs. At Cryptome
Cryptome
Cryptome is a website hosted in the United States since 1996 by independent scholars and architects John Young and Deborah Natsios that functions as a repository for information about freedom of speech, cryptography, spying, and surveillance...

.
Photo Gallery: Death and Destruction in Baghdad on Nov. 23, 2006. Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...

.

General and miscellaneous

"Wage Peace Movie", 2-minute web movie about casualties in Iraq from the American Friends Service Committee
American Friends Service Committee
The American Friends Service Committee is a Religious Society of Friends affiliated organization which works for peace and social justice in the United States and around the world...
"Eyes Wide Open", a traveling 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
Committee to Protect Journalists
The Committee to Protect Journalists is an independent nonprofit organisation based in New York City that promotes press freedom and defends the rights of journalists.-History:A group of U.S...
"Likely Humanitarian Scenarios", UN internal memo predicting 100,000 direct and 400,000 indirect casualties as a result of the invasion, 10 December 2002
"iraqimemorial.org", online database and traveling exhibition of proposals and projects to memorialize the civilian casualties in Iraq

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Overview. Iraqi death estimates by source

Iraq war logs

Iraqi Health Ministry

The Associated Press

Iraq Body Count

Iraq Family Health Survey (with WHO)

Opinion Research Business (ORB) poll

United Nations

Lancet studies

Ali al-Shemari (earlier Iraqi Health Minister)

Iraqi Security Forces (aligned with Coalition)

Iraqi insurgents

Media and aid workers

U.S. armed forces

Coalition deaths by hostile fire

Armed forces of other coalition countries

Contractors

Iraqi invasion casualties

Iraqi civilian casualties

People's Kifah

Iraq Body Count project

Iraqi refugees crisis

Non-Iraqi civilian casualties

Coalition military casualties

Troops fallen ill, injured, or wounded

Accidents and negligence

Nightline controversy

Amputees

Traumatic brain injuries

Mental illness and suicide

Iraqi insurgent casualties

Contractor casualties

Iraqi healthcare deterioration

Most Iraqi children suffering from psychological symptoms

Total Iraqi casualties

Various estimates

Iraq Body Count

Iraq Living Conditions Survey

Iraqiyun estimate

The Associated Press and Health Ministry. More information

Iraq Family Health Survey

Opinion Research Business survey of Iraqi war deaths in August 2007

D3 Systems poll in early 2007

Iraq Health Minister estimate in November 2006

2006 Excess Mortality Study

2004 Excess Mortality Study

Undercounting

Systematic underreporting by U.S.

Casualties caused by criminal and political violence

See also

External links and references