One hundred Thousand

A new study points to 100,000 civilian deaths in Iraq as a direct result of the current war. This is a much higher civilian casualty rate then anyone else has estimated (anyone else being an extremely small and dedicated group of people collecting data in an extremely large and messy conflict). The results of a cluster sample survey were published last week in The Lancet, a British Medical Journal (if you visit the site you'll need to register to read the article, registration is free). Most of the deaths are attributed to air strikes.

Researchers concluded that the risk of violent death was 58 times higher than before the war. And most of those killed were women and children. -rfe/rl

The study does not include data from Fallujah, an area which has unarguably suffered following insurgency "strikes" and "containment".

The figure, 100,000, may come as a shock to some. Iraq body Count, a study measuring deaths reported in the media is reading a casualty rate of 14,219 to 16,352 at the moment I am writing this. The new data published in The Lancet supports an oft repeated observation of my own, that if Iraq Body Count's data is a mis-estimate, it is more likely to be a gross undercount then an overcount. Iraq Body Count measures deaths reported in the media, and obviously not all deaths can be reported. The study published in The Lancet was conducted in field.

research teams led by scholars at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University interviewed 1,000 Iraqi families in 33 locations. The families were asked about deaths and births in their homes in the 15 months before the March 2003 invasion and in the 18 months since.

It is incredibly valuable having data from two quite different and independent studies in helping to understand the impact of war.