[News] Iraqi group claims over 37,000 civilian toll

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<http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/66E32EAF-0E4E-4765-9339-594C323A777F.htm>http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/66E32EAF-0E4E-4765-9339-594C323A777F.htm

Iraqi group claims over 37,000 civilian toll
by Ahmed Janabi
Saturday 31 July 2004

An Iraqi political group says more than 37,000 Iraqi civilians were killed 
between the start of the US-led invasion in March 2003 and October 2003.
50f93f.jpg

The human toll of war is all too evident in daily scenes like these

The People's Kifah, or Struggle against Hegemony, movement said in a 
statement that it carried out a detailed survey of Iraqi civilian 
fatalities during September and October 2003.

Their calculation included deaths only among the Iraqi civilian population, 
and did not count losses sustained by the Iraqi military and paramilitary 
forces.

The deputy general-secretary and spokesperson of the People's Kifah 
Movement told Aljazeera.net he could vouch for the accuracy of the figure.

"We are 100% sure that 37,000 civilian deaths is a correct estimate. Our 
study is the result of two months of hard work which involved hundreds of 
Iraqi activists and academics. Of course there may be deaths that were not 
reported to us, but the toll in any case could not be lower than our 
finding," said Muhammad al-Ubaidi.

"For the collation of our statistics we visited the most remote villages, 
spoke and coordinated with grave-diggers across Iraq, obtained information 
from hospitals, and spoke to thousands of witnesses who saw incidents in 
which Iraqi civilians were killed by US fire," he said.

Detailed figures

Al-Ubaidi, a UK-based physiology professor, provided a detailed breakdown 
of the 37,000 civilian deaths for each governorate (excluding the Kurdish 
areas) relating to the period between March and October 2003:

Baghdad 6103
Mosul 2009
Basra 6734
Nasiriya 3581
Diwania 1567
Wasit 2494
Babil 3552
Karbala and Najaf 2263
Muthana 659
Misan 2741
Anbar 2172
Kirkuk 861
Salah al-Din 1797.

The People's Kifah said the process of data gathering stopped after one of 
the group's workers was arrested by Kurdish militias and handed over to US 
forces in October 2003. The fate of the worker remains shrouded in mystery 
to this day.

Missing worker

"I am taking this opportunity of talking to Aljazeera.net to request that 
the US occupation authorities reveal the whereabouts of the worker, who was 
arrested and then went missing. We are afraid he is being tortured the way 
Abu Ghraib prisoners were tortured," al-Ubaidi said.

"His name is Ramzi Musa Ahmad. He is a 32-year-old Iraqi engineer who was 
on his way to the Iraqi Kurdish governorate al-Sulaimania last October to 
fax me the information to Britain, because telephone services had not been 
restored in Baghdad."

According to al-Ubaidi, "The minibus in which Ahmad was travelling was 
stopped at a Kurdish checkpoint. He was arrested and handed over to US army."

Banned statement

As of now, there are no reliable estimates of total Iraqi civilian 
fatalities. The interim Iraqi  government has not made available any 
statistics, while US occupation authorities in Iraq reportedly issued 
orders to the Forensic Medicine Department not to talk to the media about 
the number of bodies it receives.

Liqa Makki, a political analyst, said it is widely known in Baghdad that 
Iraqi officials are prohibited from releasing any information about body count.

"The director of Forensic Medicine Department said publicly some months ago 
that his department was receiving 70 bodies a day. But he was reprimanded 
and a statement was published in the Iraqi press prohibiting the 
announcement of any kind of body count," Makki said.

The only serious independent attempt to collate war statistics is the Iraq 
Body Count Project, which involves both US and British academics. The 
project's website currently places Iraq's civilian toll as between 11,000 
and 13,000.

The website has been criticised in some quarters for its tardiness in 
updating its figures. But Iraq Body Count Project says it is not a news 
portal and puts accuracy ahead of speed.

According to the Arab and western media, between 15,000 and 20,000 Iraqi 
civilians have perished since the launch of the invasion.

But some cast doubt on the figure, saying the number of Iraqi civilians who 
have died at the hands of the US army may never be known.

Census due

Iraq's interim government is preparing the first post-Saddam census in 
Iraq. It hopes that an accurate census will unearth long-buried facts about 
Iraq's wars.
The Planning Ministry issued instructions to Iraqis not to leave their 
homes on 12 October when 150,000 workers will be engaged in conducting the 
census.

The interim government says the census will be the last step before the 
general election scheduled for January 2005.

According to the last official census - conducted in 1997 - Iraq had a 
population of 24 million.




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