War in Iraq

[belgareth]

AP: Thousands of Iraqis Estimated Killed





By BASSEM MROUE, Associated Press Writer





BAGHDAD, Iraq - At

Sheik Omar Clinic, a big book records 10,363 violent deaths in Baghdad and nearby towns since the war began last

year — deaths caused by car bombs, clashes between Iraqis and coalition forces, mortar attacks, revenge killings and

robberies.

While America mourns the deaths of more than 1,000 of its

sons and daughters in the Iraq (news - web sites) campaign, the U.S. toll is far less than the Iraqi. No official,

reliable figures exist for the whole country, but private estimates range from 10,000 to 30,000 killed since the

United States invaded in March 2003.

The violent deaths recorded in

the leather ledger at the Sheik Omar Clinic come from only one of Iraq's 18 provinces and do not cover people who

died in such flashpoint cities as Najaf, Karbala, Fallujah, Tikrit and Ramadi.

Iraqi dead include not only insurgents, police and soldiers but also civilian men, women and children

caught in crossfire, blown apart by explosives or shot by mistake — both by fellow Iraqis or by American soldiers

and their multinational allies. And they include the victims of crime that has surged in the instability that

followed the collapse of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s regime.

Adding to the complexity of sorting out what has happened, the records that have been kept don't always say

whether a death came in a combat situation or from some other cause.

The prospect of violent death is the latest burden for a people who suffered through decades of war and a

brutal dictatorship under Saddam, whose regime has been accused by human rights groups of killing as many as 300,000

Iraqis it deemed enemies.

"During Saddam's days killings were

silent. Now the killing is done openly and loudly," said Ghali Karim Hassan, who lost his 31-year-old son, Ghaidan,

last April.

He said Ghaidan was killed in Najaf when a demonstration

called by radical cleric Muqtada al-Sadr led to a gunbattle with coalition troops, mainly Spaniards and Salvadorans.

Ghaidan, who left a wife and three children, was one of 22 protesters killed.

In a country where the dead are often buried quickly without proper accounting by authorities, the real

number of Iraqis whose lives were cut short in the Iraq conflict may never be known.



U.S. officials said they didn't have the resources to track

civilian deaths during the U.S.-led occupation, which ended officially June 28. Iraq's central authorities also

haven't reported comprehensive figures on civilian deaths — while record-keeping was meticulous under Saddam, the

interim government didn't even begin trying to keep track until five months ago.



In a guerrilla war without front lines, where teenagers confront

tanks with rocket-propelled grenades, establishing who was an innocent civilian and who was a legitimate combatant

makes the process of compiling detailed figures on civilian deaths problematic.



"It is difficult to establish the right number of casualties," said

a spokeswoman for Amnesty International, Nicole Choueiry. Her London-based human rights organization estimates more

than 10,000 Iraqi civilians died in the first year of the conflict alone. However, Amnesty's figure was based in

part on media reports that often simply repeated claims of American and Iraqi officials. Iraq is as large as

California and much of the country is too dangerous for independent teams to investigate more than a handful of

death claims.

Iraq Body Count, a private group that bases its

figures in part on reports by 40 media outlets, puts the number of civilian deaths since the conflict began at

between 11,793 and 13,802.

Hazem al-Radini at the Human Rights

Organization in Iraq said his group estimates the toll at more than 30,000 civilian deaths. He said the group

didn't have any statistics and based the figure on reports by Iraqi news media.



Iraqi authorities have begun trying to determine overall death

figures, though they face formidable problems. Insurgent groups are either reluctant to report death figures for

security reasons or inflate them to win public sympathy. And some Iraqi families bury their dead quickly, without

reporting them.

The Iraqi Health Ministry began tabulating civilian

deaths in April, when heavy fighting broke out in Fallujah and Najaf. The ministry's figures indicate 2,956

civilians, including 125 children, died across the country "as the result of a military act" between April 5 and

Aug. 31. Of those, 829 were in Baghdad, the ministry figures say.

In

some cases, it is uncertain whether individuals were killed by insurgents or soldiers or were killed by criminals or

rivals who used the turmoil of war as a cover for settling scores. And even in cases where the cause was known,

records sometimes don't specify.

However, Iraqis argue, even those

killed by criminals could be considered indirect victims of a war that destroyed Iraq's security services and

brought a spike in crime.

"Our work here multiplied by at least 10

times compared to prewar periods," said Dr. Abdul-Razzak Abdul-Amir, head of the Baghdad coroner's office.



Al-Radini at the Human Rights Organization in Iraq agreed. "The main

responsibility behind these Iraqi civilians deaths lies with the occupation because those victims would not have

fallen had there not be an occupation," he said.

[DrSmellThis]

Intense post. Besides the

30,000 or so civilians, I'd love to know how many in the Iraqi armed forces died. During the invasion, the American

generals were always saying things like, "that division essentially doesn't exist any more," shortly after every

time they encountered a division. And these divisions were sometimes 100,000 strong. I'm a little afraid to do the

math there.

[belgareth]

I'm a

little afraid to do the math there.

Yeah, same here. How many have died and how many more were wounded in

this, an unnecessary war?