War raised Iraqi death rate by 100,000

As many as 100,000 more Iraqi civilians have died in the 18 months since the US-led invasion last year than would have been expected in the period before the war, a study claimed today.

Researchers said the chances of a violent death were 58 times higher after the invasion than before it.

The study, whose results were published today by the respected Lancet medical journal, was based on interviews with Iraqis, most of them doctors. The findings were compared with the pre-war death rate.

The researchers came from Johns Hopkins University and Columbia University in the US and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. The report conceded that the data the projections were based on was of "limited precision".

The figures indicate many more Iraqis may have died since the intervention to topple dictator Saddam Hussein than was previously estimated.

There is no official figure for the number of Iraqis killed since the conflict began, but some non-governmental estimates range from 10,000 to 30,000. One human rights group, Iraq Body Count, estimates that there have been up to 16,289 civilians killed by military intervention.

By yesterday, 1,081 US service personnel and 68 British troops had been killed.

The Lancet study is thought likely to be used by critics of the US-led intervention who question the opinion of the White House and the British government that the invasion was justified to help Iraqis.

The survey indicated that violence accounted for most of the extra deaths seen since the invasion, and that air strikes from coalition forces caused most of the violent deaths, the researchers said.

"Most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children," they added.

The Lancet routinely publishes papers on the web before they appear in print, particularly if it considers the findings of urgent public health interest.

The report comes just days before the US presidential election, but there was no one at the Lancet immediately available to comment on whether the early release of the survey was timed to stimulate last-minute debate before the election.

The journal's spokesmen said they were uncertain which print issue the Iraqi report would appear in. They said it was too late to make tomorrow's issue, and possibly too late for the November 5 edition.

Richard Peto, an expert on study methods from Oxford University who was not involved with the research, said the approach the scientists took was a reasonable one to investigate the Iraq death toll.

To conduct the survey, investigators visited 33 neighbourhoods spread evenly across the country in September, randomly selecting clusters of 30 households to sample.

Of the 988 households visited, 808, comprising 7,868 people, agreed to participate in the survey.

Even though the sample size appears small, this type of survey is considered accurate and acceptable by scientists and was used to calculate war deaths in Kosovo in the late 1990s.

Even with the city of Falluja, the centre of the recent insurgency, factored out, the survey "indicates that the death toll associated with the invasion and occupation of Iraq is more likely than not about 100,000 people, and may be much higher," the report said.

The most common causes of death before the invasion of Iraq were heart attacks, strokes and other chronic diseases.

However, after the invasion, violence was recorded as the primary cause of death and was mainly attributed to coalition forces - with about 95% of those deaths caused by bombs or fire from helicopter gunships.

Violent deaths - defined as those brought about by the intentional act of others - were reported in 15 of the 33 clusters examined.

Twelve of the 73 violent deaths reported were not attributed to coalition forces. The researchers said 28 children from the survey households were said to have been killed by coalition forces. Infant mortality rose from 29 deaths per 1,000 live births before the war to 57 deaths per 1,000 afterward.

The Lancet called for further examination of the fatalities by an independent body such as the International Committee of the Red Cross, or the World Health Organisation.