Iraqi Civilian Death Toll: 100,000 (2004)

Doctors’ Survey of Families Estimates Iraqi Wartime Deaths at 100,000

Doctors’ survey of families estimates Iraqi wartime deaths at 100,000 Friday, October 29, 2004 Emma Ross Associated Press London - A survey of deaths in Iraqi households estimates that as many as 100,000 more people may have died throughout the country in the 18 months since the U.S.-led invasion than would be expected based on the death rate before the war.

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.

The scientists who wrote the report concede that the statistics they based their projections on were of “limited precision,” be cause the quality of the information depends on the accuracy of the household interviews used for the study. The interviewers were Iraqis, most of them doctors.

Designed and conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and the Al-Mustansiriya University located in Baghdad, the study was published Thursday on the Web site of the Lancet medical journal.

The survey indicated that violence accounted for most of the extra deaths seen since the invasion, and that airstrikes by coalition forces caused most of those deaths, the researchers wrote in the British-based journal.

Les Roberts, the lead researcher from Johns Hopkins, said the article’s timing just days before the U.S. presidential election was up to him.

“My motive in doing that was not to skew the election,” Roberts told The Associated Press. “My motive was that if this came out during the campaign, both candidates would be forced to pledge to protect civilian lives in Iraq.”

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

(AP Report, October 29, 2004. Emma Ross Associated Press).