Iraq war deaths ‘drop in 2010’

Group monitoring civilian deaths says total is less than 2009 but warns of lingering, low-level conflict in years ahead.

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Iraq Body Count said December is on track to be the least deadly month of the year [EPA]

A group monitoring Iraqi civilian deaths has said in its annual report that the number has dropped slightly since 2009 but warned of a lingering, low-level conflict in the years ahead.

The UK-based Iraq Body Count said in its year-end study released on Thursday that 3,976 civilians have been killed this year as of December 25, compared with 4,680 in 2009.

While there was a drop from 2009 to 2010, the organisation said the rate of decline was smaller than in previous years, indicating that future security improvements would be much harder to come by.

“The 2010 data suggest a persistent low-level conflict in Iraq that will continue to kill civilians at a similar rate for years to come,” the report said.

Figures disputed

The organisation is believed to be the only non-governmental group to have consistently recorded Iraqi civilian casualties since the war began in March 2003.

Casualty figures in the US-led war in Iraq have been a hotly disputed topic with critics on each side accusing the other of manipulating the death toll to sway public opinion.

US military officials said in the early years of the war that they did not count Iraqi civilian deaths.

But last summer, the US army posted a tally on one of its websites putting the death toll between January 2004 and August 2008 of Iraqi civilians and security forces at almost 77,000.

The tally fell short of the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry’s estimated 85,694 civilian and security deaths between January 2004 and October 31, 2008.

Iraq Body Count puts the number of dead between 99,285 and 108,398.

The organisation uses media reports and other sources to compile its information, which is updated daily on its website.

‘Sheer relentlessness’

In a hopeful sign, the group said the second half of the year – specifically after the majority of US combat forces left the country in August – showed many fewer deaths than the first half.

December is on track to be the least deadly month of the year, the group said.

Baghdad and the northern city of Mosul, 360km northwest of the capital, remained the most dangerous cities in the country, according to the organisation’s information.

Underscoring that point, a top police commander was killed in Mosul on Wednesday morning when three suicide bombers stormed the compound where he was sleeping.

Iraq Body Count also said that the security crisis in Iraq was “notable for its sheer relentlessness”.

According to the group, an average of two explosions occurred each day that resulted in civilian deaths.

After the release of hundreds of thousands of US military documents related to the Iraq war by WikiLeaks, Iraq Body Count said it had analysed some of the documents and estimated that an additional 15,000 people had been killed that the group did not previously know about.

However, the group has not yet included those figures in its overall number of war dead because it is still going through each report to verify the figures.

Source: News Agencies