Harry Dope
2008-01-10 03:40:48 UTC
Study Puts Iraqi Death Toll at 151,000
151,000 Iraqis Died in 3 Years After US Invaded, Study by Iraq and UN
Health Agency Finds
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE
The Associated Press
About 151,000 Iraqis died from violence in the three years after the
United States invaded, concludes the best effort yet to count deaths one
that still may not settle the fierce debate over the war's true toll on
civilians and others.
The estimate comes from projections by the World Health Organization and
the Iraqi government, based on door-to-door surveys of nearly 10,000
households. Experts called it the largest and most scientific study of
the Iraqi death toll since the war began.
Its bottom line is far lower than the 600,000 deaths reported in an
earlier study but higher than numbers from other groups tracking the count.
The new estimate covers a period from the start of the war in March 2003
through June 2006. It closely mirrors the tally Iraq's health minister
gave in late 2006, based on 100 bodies a day arriving at morgues and
hospitals. His number shocked people in and outside Iraq, because it was
so much higher than previously accepted estimates.
No official count has ever been available. While the U.S. military says
it does not track Iraqi deaths, it has challenged some news reports of
tolls from shootings and bombings as exaggerated indicating it does in
fact monitor fatalities.
In November, a U.S. military official said the Pentagon was working with
Iraqi authorities to better track civilian casualties. One goal is to
avoid duplicate reports, said Col. Bill Rapp, a senior aide to the top
U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus.
The true toll may never be known because many deaths go unreported in
the chaos that has gripped the country, or the numbers may be tainted by
sectarian bias. The Iraqi security forces and government are led by
Shiites. Muslim burial traditions add to difficulties many families are
believed to simply bury loved ones before sundown on the day of death
without ever reporting the fatality.
Still, Iraq's minister of health, Dr. Salih Mahdi Motlab Al-Hasnawi,
defended the new estimate in a telephone interview with reporters Wednesday.
"This is a very sound survey" with a large sample and good methods, he said.
Richard Brennan of the New York-Based International Rescue Committee,
which has done similar research in Kosovo, Uganda and Congo, agreed.
"The goal is not to give an absolute, precise number of deaths. The goal
is to give a sense of the magnitude of the problem," he said.
White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto said White House
officials had not seen the study, but called the deaths of Iraqi
citizens or any troops "tragic."
"We mourn the deaths of all people in Iraq as the country fights to
defeat extremists ...," he said, contending that last year's surge of
troops is reducing civilian deaths.
The United Nations paid more than $1.6 million for the new study.
Results were published online Wednesday by the New England Journal of
Medicine.
By any count, the toll is "massive," wrote Catherine and John
Brownstein, statistics experts at Yale University and Harvard Medical
School, respectively, in an accompanying essay. It likely still is low,
because many Iraqis have fled and aren't there to report deaths and
because Iraq is too dangerous to survey some areas.
A poignant example: One statistician was killed during the project and
another, shortly afterward.
The survey was done by Iraq Ministry of Health employees during late
2006 and early 2007 in all 18 provinces, divided to get a valid sample
of each area. But Iraqis hold a deep distrust of central authority,
given the tribal nature of their society and the years they lived under
Saddam Hussein, whose grip on power was built partially on a web of
informers.
"We are dealing with surveys in a country where there is unrest and high
insecurity situations," said Dr. Ties Boerma, a WHO official. "Surveys
are imperfect, no matter how well we do it."
Researchers asked families whether any deaths had occurred in their
households, recorded details like age and time and place of death, and
assigned deaths as violence-related or not.
However, road accidents were not counted unless they were caused by a
bomb one of many ways that surveyors could have underestimated the true
toll, some experts said.
Limiting the study to the time since the invasion in March 2003, and
extrapolating results to the whole country, researchers arrived at the
151,000 estimate. The study authors say they are 95 percent certain that
the true number is between 104,000 and 223,000. Iraq's population is
roughly 26 million.
That seems low, especially because the new survey saw no increase in
deaths in recent years, as previous surveys did, said Columbia
University's Dr. Ronald Waldman, who has long done humanitarian research
for WHO and others.
More than 100 neighborhoods, mostly in Baghdad and Anbar, could not be
visited for safety reasons. So researchers estimated deaths in those
areas by using a formula based on information from another group that
tallies fatalities, the British-based Iraq Body Count.
The Body Count project bases its figures mostly on media reports a
method known to underestimate deaths because many go unreported. That
group listed 47,668 civilian deaths from violence during the period
studied in the WHO survey, and between 80,331 and 87,742 to date since
the war began.
The group's numbers do not include deaths of fighters, but the WHO
survey and an earlier one published in the journal Lancet in 2006 do.
The Lancet study, by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the
Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, drew wide criticism, partly
because it came out just before the 2006 congressional elections. It
surveyed 1,849 households and concluded that 600,000 Iraqis had died
from violence, mostly gunfire, and roughly 50,000 more from other causes
like heart disease and cancer.
The WHO survey tallied only violence-related deaths, but researchers
plan future reports on other health measures.
Les Roberts, a Columbia University epidemiologist involved in an even
earlier survey in 2004 when he was at Johns Hopkins, believes the new
toll is too low.
"This is consistent with family members not wanting to tell the
government about violent deaths," he said.
The Associated Press began tracking civilian deaths after the new Iraqi
government took office on April 28, 2005. Since then, at least 37,547
Iraqis have lost their lives due to war-related violence, according to
the AP toll, which is considered a minimum since many killings go
unreported or uncounted. It's compiled from police, hospital officials,
morgue workers and verifiable witness accounts, and reporters and
photographers at the scenes. Insurgent deaths are not included.
Associated Press writers Frank Jordans in Geneva, Steven R. Hurst in
Baghdad and Jennifer Loven in Washington contributed to this report.
On the Net:
World Health Organization: http://www.who.int
New England Journal: http://www.nejm.org
Iraq Body Count: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material
may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures
151,000 Iraqis Died in 3 Years After US Invaded, Study by Iraq and UN
Health Agency Finds
By MARILYNN MARCHIONE
The Associated Press
About 151,000 Iraqis died from violence in the three years after the
United States invaded, concludes the best effort yet to count deaths one
that still may not settle the fierce debate over the war's true toll on
civilians and others.
The estimate comes from projections by the World Health Organization and
the Iraqi government, based on door-to-door surveys of nearly 10,000
households. Experts called it the largest and most scientific study of
the Iraqi death toll since the war began.
Its bottom line is far lower than the 600,000 deaths reported in an
earlier study but higher than numbers from other groups tracking the count.
The new estimate covers a period from the start of the war in March 2003
through June 2006. It closely mirrors the tally Iraq's health minister
gave in late 2006, based on 100 bodies a day arriving at morgues and
hospitals. His number shocked people in and outside Iraq, because it was
so much higher than previously accepted estimates.
No official count has ever been available. While the U.S. military says
it does not track Iraqi deaths, it has challenged some news reports of
tolls from shootings and bombings as exaggerated indicating it does in
fact monitor fatalities.
In November, a U.S. military official said the Pentagon was working with
Iraqi authorities to better track civilian casualties. One goal is to
avoid duplicate reports, said Col. Bill Rapp, a senior aide to the top
U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus.
The true toll may never be known because many deaths go unreported in
the chaos that has gripped the country, or the numbers may be tainted by
sectarian bias. The Iraqi security forces and government are led by
Shiites. Muslim burial traditions add to difficulties many families are
believed to simply bury loved ones before sundown on the day of death
without ever reporting the fatality.
Still, Iraq's minister of health, Dr. Salih Mahdi Motlab Al-Hasnawi,
defended the new estimate in a telephone interview with reporters Wednesday.
"This is a very sound survey" with a large sample and good methods, he said.
Richard Brennan of the New York-Based International Rescue Committee,
which has done similar research in Kosovo, Uganda and Congo, agreed.
"The goal is not to give an absolute, precise number of deaths. The goal
is to give a sense of the magnitude of the problem," he said.
White House deputy press secretary Tony Fratto said White House
officials had not seen the study, but called the deaths of Iraqi
citizens or any troops "tragic."
"We mourn the deaths of all people in Iraq as the country fights to
defeat extremists ...," he said, contending that last year's surge of
troops is reducing civilian deaths.
The United Nations paid more than $1.6 million for the new study.
Results were published online Wednesday by the New England Journal of
Medicine.
By any count, the toll is "massive," wrote Catherine and John
Brownstein, statistics experts at Yale University and Harvard Medical
School, respectively, in an accompanying essay. It likely still is low,
because many Iraqis have fled and aren't there to report deaths and
because Iraq is too dangerous to survey some areas.
A poignant example: One statistician was killed during the project and
another, shortly afterward.
The survey was done by Iraq Ministry of Health employees during late
2006 and early 2007 in all 18 provinces, divided to get a valid sample
of each area. But Iraqis hold a deep distrust of central authority,
given the tribal nature of their society and the years they lived under
Saddam Hussein, whose grip on power was built partially on a web of
informers.
"We are dealing with surveys in a country where there is unrest and high
insecurity situations," said Dr. Ties Boerma, a WHO official. "Surveys
are imperfect, no matter how well we do it."
Researchers asked families whether any deaths had occurred in their
households, recorded details like age and time and place of death, and
assigned deaths as violence-related or not.
However, road accidents were not counted unless they were caused by a
bomb one of many ways that surveyors could have underestimated the true
toll, some experts said.
Limiting the study to the time since the invasion in March 2003, and
extrapolating results to the whole country, researchers arrived at the
151,000 estimate. The study authors say they are 95 percent certain that
the true number is between 104,000 and 223,000. Iraq's population is
roughly 26 million.
That seems low, especially because the new survey saw no increase in
deaths in recent years, as previous surveys did, said Columbia
University's Dr. Ronald Waldman, who has long done humanitarian research
for WHO and others.
More than 100 neighborhoods, mostly in Baghdad and Anbar, could not be
visited for safety reasons. So researchers estimated deaths in those
areas by using a formula based on information from another group that
tallies fatalities, the British-based Iraq Body Count.
The Body Count project bases its figures mostly on media reports a
method known to underestimate deaths because many go unreported. That
group listed 47,668 civilian deaths from violence during the period
studied in the WHO survey, and between 80,331 and 87,742 to date since
the war began.
The group's numbers do not include deaths of fighters, but the WHO
survey and an earlier one published in the journal Lancet in 2006 do.
The Lancet study, by Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the
Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, drew wide criticism, partly
because it came out just before the 2006 congressional elections. It
surveyed 1,849 households and concluded that 600,000 Iraqis had died
from violence, mostly gunfire, and roughly 50,000 more from other causes
like heart disease and cancer.
The WHO survey tallied only violence-related deaths, but researchers
plan future reports on other health measures.
Les Roberts, a Columbia University epidemiologist involved in an even
earlier survey in 2004 when he was at Johns Hopkins, believes the new
toll is too low.
"This is consistent with family members not wanting to tell the
government about violent deaths," he said.
The Associated Press began tracking civilian deaths after the new Iraqi
government took office on April 28, 2005. Since then, at least 37,547
Iraqis have lost their lives due to war-related violence, according to
the AP toll, which is considered a minimum since many killings go
unreported or uncounted. It's compiled from police, hospital officials,
morgue workers and verifiable witness accounts, and reporters and
photographers at the scenes. Insurgent deaths are not included.
Associated Press writers Frank Jordans in Geneva, Steven R. Hurst in
Baghdad and Jennifer Loven in Washington contributed to this report.
On the Net:
World Health Organization: http://www.who.int
New England Journal: http://www.nejm.org
Iraq Body Count: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material
may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Copyright © 2008 ABC News Internet Ventures