Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000

By David Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, October 11, 2006; Page A12

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442.html

A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.
The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling of households throughout the country, is far higher than ones produced by other groups, including Iraq's government.



A man mourns his son Friday in Baqubah, a city north of Baghdad. The child died in random gunfire near a family home in the village of Khan Bani Saad. (By Mohammed Adnan -- Associated Press)
It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group.
The surveyors said they found a steady increase in mortality since the invasion, with a steeper rise in the last year that appears to reflect a worsening of violence as reported by the U.S. military, the news media and civilian groups. In the year ending in June, the team calculated Iraq's mortality rate to be roughly four times what it was the year before the war.
Of the total 655,000 estimated "excess deaths," 601,000 resulted from violence and the rest from disease and other causes, according to the study. This is about 500 unexpected violent deaths per day throughout the country.
The survey was done by Iraqi physicians and overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health. The findings are being published online today by the British medical journal the Lancet.
The same group in 2004 published an estimate of roughly 100,000 deaths in the first 18 months after the invasion. That figure was much higher than expected, and was controversial. The new study estimates that about 500,000 more Iraqis, both civilian and military, have died since then -- a finding likely to be equally controversial.
Both this and the earlier study are the only ones to estimate mortality in Iraq using scientific methods. The technique, called "cluster sampling," is used to estimate mortality in famines and after natural disasters.
While acknowledging that the estimate is large, the researchers believe it is sound for numerous reasons. The recent survey got the same estimate for immediate post-invasion deaths as the early survey, which gives the researchers confidence in the methods. The great majority of deaths were also substantiated by death certificates.
"We're very confident with the results," said Gilbert Burnham, a Johns Hopkins physician and epidemiologist.
A Defense Department spokesman did not comment directly on the estimate.
"The Department of Defense always regrets the loss of any innocent life in Iraq or anywhere else," said Lt. Col. Mark Ballesteros. "The coalition takes enormous precautions to prevent civilian deaths and injuries."
-- I want to run out and link hands with others in the struggle, clench my fists and strike Fate in the face. I want to drown in my deepest blood that I may share with the human race its burden and carry it onward, giving birth to life My death shall be a victory. -- Badr Shakir Al-Sayyab, Iraqi poet

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