Deaths of Noncombatants in Iraq, 2003–2008

[Vassnti]

We often see casualty figures thrown into posts claiming widely varying figures and causes, I came across this article in the NEJM and thought it might be of interest to members. To save band width i wont reprint the entire article which can be found here.

NEJM -- The Weapons That Kill Civilians -- Deaths of Children and Noncombatants in Iraq, 2003-2008

We based our data set on the number of Iraqi civilian deaths recorded as of June 13, 2008, for the 5-year period of analysis, March 20, 2003, through March 19, 2008. Of the total of 91,358 Iraqi civilian deaths from armed violence recorded for this period, we excluded 10,027 deaths from prolonged violence (e.g., the two sieges of Fallujah and prolonged episodes of violence during the invasion of March 20, 2003, through April 30, 2003), and 20,850 deaths recorded only in aggregate reports from morgues and hospitals, since these deaths were not reliably linked to specific events of a weapon's use. As our table shows, we focused on the remaining 60,481 deaths of Iraqi civilians and the causative weapons in 14,196 armed-violence events considered to be of short duration (lasting up to two calendar dates), occurring in an identifiable location, and directly causing one or more reported civilian deaths. Each death included in the table is of an individual noncombatant and is linked to a type of weapon used in a specific time and place; these are not estimates extrapolated from a sample.