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10,000 civilian deaths in 2003

01 January 2004

The war monitoring group, Iraq Body Count (IBC), has recorded "as many as 10,000 non-combatant civilian deaths during 2003" and the Independent on Sunday reports "that more than 350 civilians have been killed in attacks since the beginning of the year" until mid-February. "When added to the deaths recorded in 2003...this brings the number of non-combatants killed since the conflict began to as many as 10,433". The IBC, an independent group of US and UK researchers, warns that "Many civilian deaths are almost certainly, as yet, unreported, and even the current IBC maximum cannot be considered to approach the a complete and final toll of innocent deaths.” The organisation is calling for "an official inquiry into the human costs of the Iraq war."

The IBC undertook its Iraqi civilian body count (estimated at between a minimum of 8,235 and a maximum of 10,079) to fill the lacuna left by the US and UK governments' refusal to count, or even acknowledge, the Iraqi civilian death toll. While the governments' have been precise on the number of British and US invaders killed - 57 British military personnel and 535 Americans at the time of writing - the IBC characterises the official response to Iraqi civilian casualties as "evasive". They argue that the governments are dissembling by using tactics such as:

* repeated professions of ignorance and a denial of any possibility of gaining useful knowledge
* denial of responsibility
* the establishment of narrowly-limited military "self-investigations"
* a focus limited to US/UK military deaths
* the deliberate obstruction of Iraqi's own efforts to count their dead
* "Insultingly low" token compensation payment to a small number of Iraqi claimants

The IBC also has published detailed evidence of at least 200 civilians killed by coalition cluster bombs during the Iraq war. The number has been questioned by the Pentagon, which has insisted that their war is was not against the Iraqi people but to liberate them.

Independent on Sunday 15.2.04; Iraq Body Count www.iraqbodycount.org