a comprehensive Iraq Index, from 2003 onward, from military deaths / injuries, civilian deaths, education, economics; a good deal of information here ...
Exact Death Toll of Iraqis Remains Murky
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Mar. 10, 2006
(AP) Three years into the war, one grim measure of its impact on Iraqis can be seen at Baghdad's morgue: There, the staff has photographed and catalogued more than 24,000 bodies from the Baghdad area alone since 2003, almost all killed in violence.
Despite such snapshots, the overall number of Iraqi civilians and soldiers killed since the U.S.-led invasion in spring 2003 remains murky. Bloodshed has worsened each year, pushing the Iraqi death toll into the tens of thousands. But no one knows the exact toll.
President Bush has said he thinks violence claimed at least 30,000 Iraqi dead as of December, while some researchers have cited numbers of 50,000, 75,000 or beyond.
The Pentagon has carefully counted the number of American military dead _ now more than 2,300 _ but declines to release its tally of Iraqi civilian or insurgent deaths. ...
At the Baghdad morgue, more than 10,000 corpses were delivered in 2005, up from more than 8,000 in 2004 and about 6,000 in 2003, said the morgue's director Dr. Faik Baker. All were corpses from either suspicious deaths or violent or war-related deaths _ things like car bombs and gunshot wounds, tribal reprisals or crime _ and not from natural causes.
By contrast, the morgue recorded fewer than 3,000 violent or suspicious deaths in 2002, before the war, Baker said. The tally at the Baghdad morgue alone _ one of several mortuaries in Iraq _ thus exceeds figures from Iraqi government ministries that say 7,429 Iraqis were killed across all of Iraq in 2005.
"The violence keeps getting worse," the morgue director said Feb. 28 by phone from Jordan, where he said he had fled recently for his own safety after he said he was under pressure to not report deaths. Freezers built to hold six bodies are sometimes crammed with 20 unclaimed corpses. "You can imagine what a mess it is," he said. ... But it is Iraqi civilians who bear the brunt of the deaths. ...
Iraq Body Count, a British anti-war group, put its tally of war dead at between 28,864 and 32,506 as of Feb. 26, but that doesn't include Iraqi soldiers or insurgents. It compiles its estimate of civilian deaths from news stories, corroborating each death through at least two reports.
But if Iraqi officials standardize tallies days later, news organizations have moved on to reporting other violence and may be unaware that early figures have been adjusted. ...
The question of who is to blame for the Iraqi deaths has long been controversial. Some critics argue that with the United States and its allies unable to maintain order, Iraq has become a deadlier place for civilians than it was under Saddam Hussein. ...
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