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</font><font face="arial" size=2><a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/66E32EAF-0E4E-4765-9339-594C323A777F.htm">http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/66E32EAF-0E4E-4765-9339-594C323A777F.htm</a><br><br>
</font><font face="arial" size=5><b>Iraqi group claims over 37,000
civilian toll<br>
</b></font><font size=3><i>by Ahmed Janabi<br>
Saturday 31 July 2004<br><br>
</i></font><font face="arial" size=3><b>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. <br>
</b><img src="cid:6.1.0.6.2.20040801095343.02c00ef0@66.103.156.66.1" width=250 height=199 alt="50f93f.jpg"></b></font><br>
<font face="arial" size=1><b>The human toll of war is all too evident in
daily scenes like these <br><br>
</b></font><font face="arial" size=3>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. <br><br>
Their calculation included deaths only among the Iraqi civilian
population, and did not count losses sustained by the Iraqi military and
paramilitary forces. <br><br>
The deputy general-secretary and spokesperson of the People's Kifah
Movement told Aljazeera.net he could vouch for the accuracy of the
figure. <br><br>
"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. <br><br>
"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.<br><br>
<b>Detailed figures</b></font> <br><br>
<font face="arial" size=3>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:<br><br>
Baghdad 6103<br>
Mosul 2009<br>
Basra 6734<br>
Nasiriya 3581<br>
Diwania 1567<br>
Wasit 2494<br>
Babil 3552<br>
Karbala and Najaf 2263<br>
Muthana 659<br>
Misan 2741<br>
Anbar 2172<br>
Kirkuk 861<br>
Salah al-Din 1797. <br><br>
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.<br><br>
<b>Missing worker</b></font> <br><br>
<font face="arial" size=3>"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.<br><br>
"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." <br><br>
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."<br><br>
<b>Banned statement<br><br>
</b>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. <br><br>
Liqa Makki, a political analyst, said it is widely known in Baghdad that
Iraqi officials are prohibited from releasing any information about body
count.<br><br>
"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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
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. <br><br>
According to the Arab and western media, between 15,000 and 20,000 Iraqi
civilians have perished since the launch of the invasion.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
</font><b>Census due<br><br>
</b><font face="arial" size=3>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.<br>
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.<br>
<br>
The interim government says the census will be the last step before the
general election scheduled for January 2005.<br>
<br>
According to the last official census - conducted in 1997 - Iraq had a
population of 24 million.<br><br>
<br><br>
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