25,000 Iraqis killed since U.S. invasion, group says

azzaman: The U.S.-led war and military operations in the country have killed or injured 67,365 Iraqi civilians, according to a new study.

The study, published on the website of Iraq Body Count, said more than 24,865 of these civilian casualties were fatal.

However, the group said, this is count should not be taken as thorough as it does not cover all the victims everywhere in Iraq.

It said it reached the result by sifting through more than 10,000 media reports published between 2003 and 2005.

One of each 10 Iraqis reported killed was below 18 years and one in each 200 was below two years.

One out of every thousand Iraqis has been killed since March 2003 when U.S. troops landed in Baghdad, the group said.

The report does not include military casualties due to lack of statistics in this regard.

It said most of the casualties originated in densely populated areas and according to Health Ministry statistics half the victims were in Baghdad.

One of every 500 people has been killed in Baghdad while the death ratio surges one out of every 136 people in Falluja. Link

db: This may well turn out to be a gross understatement, given that IBC have based these figures on 'media reports' - and for the most part the media are reporting from hotel rooms. Robert Fisk, when asked in an recent interview with abc Australia to estimate the true death toll, gave a figure of 150,000 - but also made the point that there is no real way of being certain - thanks to the Iraq government/US/UK need for us to remain in the dark and the consequent lack of will to find out.