Friday, October 29, 2004
Study puts Iraqi deaths at 100,000
British publication releases report early
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
THE NEW YORK TIMES
PARIS -- About 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq as a direct or indirect consequence of the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion, according to a new study by a research team at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Coming just five days before the presidential election the finding is certain to generate intense controversy, since it is far higher than previous mortality estimates for the Iraq conflict.
Editors of The Lancet, the London-based medical publication, where an article describing the study is scheduled to appear, decided not to wait for the normal publication date next week, but to place the research online today, apparently so it could circulate before the election.
The Bush administration has not estimated civilian casualties from the conflict, and independent groups have put the number at most in the tens of thousands.
In the study, teams of researchers led by Dr. Les Roberts fanned out across Iraq in mid-September to interview nearly 1,000 families in 33 locations. Families were interviewed about births and deaths in the household before and after the invasion.
Although the authors acknowledge that thorough data collection was difficult in what is effectively still a war zone, the data they managed to collect are extensive. Using what they described as the best sampling methods that could be applied under the circumstances, they found that Iraqis were 2.5 times more likely to die in the 17 months after the invasion than in the 14 months before it.
Before the invasion, the most common causes of death in Iraq were heart attacks, strokes and chronic diseases. Afterward, violent death was far ahead of all other causes.
"We were shocked at the magnitude, but we're quite sure that the estimate of 100,000 is a conservative estimate," said Dr. Gilbert Burnham of the Johns Hopkins team. Burnham said the team excluded data about deaths in Fallujah in making their estimate, because that city was the site of unusually intense violence.
In 15 of the 33 communities visited, residents reported violent deaths in their families since the conflict started.
They attributed many of those deaths to attacks by American-led forces, mostly air strikes, and most of those killed were women and children.
The risk of violent death was 58 times higher than before the war, the researchers reported.
The team included researchers from the Johns Hopkins Center for International Emergency, Disaster and Refugee Studies, which has conducted similar mortality studies about North Korea and Congo. It also included doctors from Al Mustansiriya University Medical School in Baghdad.
There is bound to be skepticism about the estimate of 100,000 excess deaths, since that translates into an average of 166 deaths a day since the invasion.
But some people were not surprised.
"I am emotionally shocked, but I have no trouble in believing that this many people have been killed," said Scott Lipscomb, an associate professor at Northwestern University, who works on the www.iraqbodycount.net project.
That project, which collates only deaths reported in the news media, currently put the maximum civilian death toll at just under 17,000. "We've always maintained that the actual count must be much higher," Lipscomb said.
The Lancet researchers said they were highly technical in their selection of interview sites and data analysis, although interview locations were limited by the researchers' decision to cut down on driving time when possible in order to reduce the risk to the interviewers. Each team included an Iraqi health professional, generally a physician.
Although the teams relied primarily on interviews with local residents, they also requested to see at least two death certificates at the end of interviews in each area, to try to ensure that people had remembered and responded honestly. The research team decided that asking for death certificates in each case, during the interviews, might cause hostility and could put the research team in danger.
Some of those killed may have been insurgents, not true civilians, the authors noted.
DEVELOPMENTS IN IRAQ
Insurgents slaughter 11 Iraqi soldiers, beheading one, then shooting the others execution-style, and declare on an Islamic militant Web site that Iraqi fighters will avenge "the blood" of women and children killed in U.S. strikes on Fallujah.
Militants claim to have kidnapped a Polish woman in her 60s who is married to an Iraqi. The captors of Teresa Borcz-Kalifa demand that Poland withdraw its 2,400 soldiers and that the U.S.-led coalition free all Iraqi women held at Abu Ghraib prison. Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski refuses to surrender "to the dictate of terrorists."
A videotape broadcast by Al-Jazeera television shows two truck drivers -- from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka -- who were taken hostage.
Two more U.S. soldiers are killed -- one in a car bombing in Baghdad and the other in an ambush near Balad, 40 miles north of the capital. At least 1,109 U.S. service members have died.
U.S. aircraft bomb a suspected insurgent safe house in Fallujah, killing two people, hospital officials said. The overnight strike in the northern part of the city targeted a "meeting site" used by suspected allies of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the U.S. military said in a statement.
Insurgents clash with U.S. forces in Ramadiand another militant stronghold. Two people are killed and four wounded.
U.S. Marines capture 16 suspected insurgents in a sweep south of Baghdad.
Gunmen open fire at police cars patrolling an area in the center of Baqouba, injuring one officer, police say.
An advance party of British soldiers arrives safely at their new base near Baghdad, ahead of the rest of the 850-troop contingent. The U.S. military wants the British to assume responsibility in areas close to Baghdad, so U.S. troops can shift to insurgent strongholds west of the capital, including Fallujah.
The British mission in Baghdad issues a warning that the threat to British nationals remains high.
-- The Associated Press
Study puts Iraqi deaths at 100,000
British publication releases report early
By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL
THE NEW YORK TIMES
PARIS -- About 100,000 civilians have died in Iraq as a direct or indirect consequence of the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion, according to a new study by a research team at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
Coming just five days before the presidential election the finding is certain to generate intense controversy, since it is far higher than previous mortality estimates for the Iraq conflict.
Editors of The Lancet, the London-based medical publication, where an article describing the study is scheduled to appear, decided not to wait for the normal publication date next week, but to place the research online today, apparently so it could circulate before the election.
The Bush administration has not estimated civilian casualties from the conflict, and independent groups have put the number at most in the tens of thousands.
In the study, teams of researchers led by Dr. Les Roberts fanned out across Iraq in mid-September to interview nearly 1,000 families in 33 locations. Families were interviewed about births and deaths in the household before and after the invasion.
Although the authors acknowledge that thorough data collection was difficult in what is effectively still a war zone, the data they managed to collect are extensive. Using what they described as the best sampling methods that could be applied under the circumstances, they found that Iraqis were 2.5 times more likely to die in the 17 months after the invasion than in the 14 months before it.
Before the invasion, the most common causes of death in Iraq were heart attacks, strokes and chronic diseases. Afterward, violent death was far ahead of all other causes.
"We were shocked at the magnitude, but we're quite sure that the estimate of 100,000 is a conservative estimate," said Dr. Gilbert Burnham of the Johns Hopkins team. Burnham said the team excluded data about deaths in Fallujah in making their estimate, because that city was the site of unusually intense violence.
In 15 of the 33 communities visited, residents reported violent deaths in their families since the conflict started.
They attributed many of those deaths to attacks by American-led forces, mostly air strikes, and most of those killed were women and children.
The risk of violent death was 58 times higher than before the war, the researchers reported.
The team included researchers from the Johns Hopkins Center for International Emergency, Disaster and Refugee Studies, which has conducted similar mortality studies about North Korea and Congo. It also included doctors from Al Mustansiriya University Medical School in Baghdad.
There is bound to be skepticism about the estimate of 100,000 excess deaths, since that translates into an average of 166 deaths a day since the invasion.
But some people were not surprised.
"I am emotionally shocked, but I have no trouble in believing that this many people have been killed," said Scott Lipscomb, an associate professor at Northwestern University, who works on the www.iraqbodycount.net project.
That project, which collates only deaths reported in the news media, currently put the maximum civilian death toll at just under 17,000. "We've always maintained that the actual count must be much higher," Lipscomb said.
The Lancet researchers said they were highly technical in their selection of interview sites and data analysis, although interview locations were limited by the researchers' decision to cut down on driving time when possible in order to reduce the risk to the interviewers. Each team included an Iraqi health professional, generally a physician.
Although the teams relied primarily on interviews with local residents, they also requested to see at least two death certificates at the end of interviews in each area, to try to ensure that people had remembered and responded honestly. The research team decided that asking for death certificates in each case, during the interviews, might cause hostility and could put the research team in danger.
Some of those killed may have been insurgents, not true civilians, the authors noted.
DEVELOPMENTS IN IRAQ
Insurgents slaughter 11 Iraqi soldiers, beheading one, then shooting the others execution-style, and declare on an Islamic militant Web site that Iraqi fighters will avenge "the blood" of women and children killed in U.S. strikes on Fallujah.
Militants claim to have kidnapped a Polish woman in her 60s who is married to an Iraqi. The captors of Teresa Borcz-Kalifa demand that Poland withdraw its 2,400 soldiers and that the U.S.-led coalition free all Iraqi women held at Abu Ghraib prison. Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski refuses to surrender "to the dictate of terrorists."
A videotape broadcast by Al-Jazeera television shows two truck drivers -- from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka -- who were taken hostage.
Two more U.S. soldiers are killed -- one in a car bombing in Baghdad and the other in an ambush near Balad, 40 miles north of the capital. At least 1,109 U.S. service members have died.
U.S. aircraft bomb a suspected insurgent safe house in Fallujah, killing two people, hospital officials said. The overnight strike in the northern part of the city targeted a "meeting site" used by suspected allies of Jordanian militant Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the U.S. military said in a statement.
Insurgents clash with U.S. forces in Ramadiand another militant stronghold. Two people are killed and four wounded.
U.S. Marines capture 16 suspected insurgents in a sweep south of Baghdad.
Gunmen open fire at police cars patrolling an area in the center of Baqouba, injuring one officer, police say.
An advance party of British soldiers arrives safely at their new base near Baghdad, ahead of the rest of the 850-troop contingent. The U.S. military wants the British to assume responsibility in areas close to Baghdad, so U.S. troops can shift to insurgent strongholds west of the capital, including Fallujah.
The British mission in Baghdad issues a warning that the threat to British nationals remains high.
-- The Associated Press
