Agencies, Up to 15,000 Iraqis were killed in the first days of America's invasion and occupation of Iraq, a study shows. Up to 4300 were civilians.
The report, by Project on Defence Alternatives, a research institute from Cambridge, Massachusetts, offers the most comprehensive account so far of how many Iraqis died.
The toll is limited to the early stages of the war, from March 19, when US tanks crossed the Kuwaiti border, to April 20, when US troops had consolidated their hold on Baghdad.
The report's release yesterday came as the US military death toll passed a milestone.
More US soldiers have died in combat in Iraq since May 1, when US President George Bush declared an end to major combat operations, than died during the main phase of the war.
The 115th US combat death – 114 died before May 1 – came during bombings in the Iraqi capital on Monday.
Roadside bombs are the most common killer of US troops these days, clinically referred to as “improvised explosive devices”.
In the bureaucratic language peculiar to the military, this is the record of a nation's army slowly bleeding in battle.
US combat deaths have been increasing, not declining, amid signs that guerilla fighters are becoming better organised.
The Iraq body count researchers drew on hospital records, official US military statistics, news reports and survey methodology to arrive at their figures. The study, which estimates Iraq's war dead at between 10,800 and 15,100, uses a far more rigorous definition of civilian than previous studies to arrive at a figure of 3200 to 4300 civilian non-combatant deaths.
It breaks down the combat deaths of up to 10,800 Iraqis who fought the American invasion. The figures include regular Iraqi troops, as well as members of the Baath party and other militias.
The killing was concentrated – with heavy casualties at the southern entrances of Baghdad – but up to 80 per cent of the Iraqi army units survived the war relatively unscathed, in part because troops deserted.
Up to 5726 Iraqis were killed in the US assault on Baghdad, when the streets of the Iraqi capital were strewn with the bodies of people trying to flee.
Up to 3531 – more than half – of the dead in the assault on the capital were civilians, the report shows.
Overall in Iraq, the ratio of civilian to military deaths is almost twice as high as in the 1991 Gulf War.
The overall toll of the first war was far higher, with estimates of 20,000 Iraqi soldiers and 3500 civilians killed.
But Operation Iraqi Freedom, as the US military calls this year's war, has been far deadlier to Iraqi civilians, both in absolute numbers and in the proportion of non-combatant to military deaths.
The findings defy the reasoning that precision-guided weapons spare civilian lives.
