15,000 people killed in invasion

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1072955,00.html


Up to 15,000 people killed in invasion, claims thinktank 


Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington


Wednesday October 29, 2003


The Guardian

As many as 15,000 Iraqis were killed in the first days of America's 
invasion and occupation of Iraq, a study produced by an independent US 
thinktank said yesterday. Up to 4,300 of the dead were civilian 
noncombatants. 

The report, by Project on Defence Alternatives, a research institute 
from Cambridge, Massachussets, offers the most comprehensive account so 
far of how many Iraqis died. 

The toll of Iraq's war dead covered by the report is limited to the 
early stages of the war, from March 19 when American tanks crossed the 
Kuwaiti border, to April 20, when US troops had consolidated their hold 
on Baghdad. 

Researchers drew on hospital records, official US military statistics, 
news reports, and survey methodology to arrive at their figures. 

They were also able to make use of two earlier studies on Iraq's war 
dead from Iraq Body Count, a website which has kept a running total of 
those killed, and the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, which 
has sought to count the dead and injured of the war in order to pursue 
compensation claims for their families. 

The new report, which estimates Iraq's war dead at between 10,800 and 
15,100, uses a far more rigorous definition of civilian than the other 
studies to arrive at a figure of between 3,200 and 4,300 civilian 
noncombatants. 

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 Ba'ath party and other militias. 

The killing was concentrated - with heavy casualties at the southern 
entrances of Baghdad - but as many as 80% of the Iraqi army units 
survived the war relatively unscathed, in part because troops deserted. 

As many as 5,726 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 the fighting. 

As many as 3,531 - more than half - of the dead in the assault on the 
capital were noncombatant civilians, according to the report. 

Overall in Iraq, the ratio of civilian to military deaths is almost 
twice as high as it was in the last Gulf war in 1991. The overall toll 
of the first war was far higher - with estimates of 20,000 Iraqi 
soldiers and 3,500 civilians killed. 

However, Operation Iraqi Freedom, as the US military calls this year's 
war, has proved far deadlier to Iraqi civilians both in absolute 
numbers, and in the proportion of noncombatant to military deaths. 

The findings defy the reasoning that precision-guided weapons spare 
civilian lives. According to the author of the study, Carol Conetta, 68% 
of the munitions used in this war were precision-guided, compared with 
6.5 % in 1991. 

However, he argued yesterday that his report demonstrated that 
sophisticated weaponry did not necessarily offer protection to civilians 
in war zones. 

"Many of the recent wars have been fought with the notion of a new type 
of warfare that produce very low civilian casualties. What we see here 
is that in fact we don't have that magic bullet," he said. 

"In this war in particular we see that improved capabilities in 
precision attacks have been used to pursue more ambitious objectives 
rather than achieve lower numbers of civilian dead." 

Counting the human cost

Total war dead (Iraq) 

Between 10,800 and 15,100, with a midpoint of 12,950 

Combatants killed (Iraq) 

Between 7,600 and 10,800, with a midpoint of 9,200 

Noncombatants killed (Iraq) 

Between 3,200 and 4,300, with a midpoint of 3,750 

War dead (Baghdad) 

Between 4,376 and 5,726, with a midpoint of 5,051 

Combatants killed (Baghdad) 

Between 2,224 and 3,531, with a midpoint of 2,878 

Noncombatants killed (Baghdad) 

Between 1,990 and 2,357, with a midpoint of 2,174

· Source: Project on Defence Alternatives research

www.comw.org/pda 
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003