Further evidence of huge Iraqi death toll…
On April 23, the Associated Press (AP) published a secret tally compiled by the Iraqi Health Ministry that recorded 87,215 violent deaths in the country between early 2005 and February 28, 2009. Violent deaths were defined by the AP’s source in the Iraqi government as those caused by “shootings, bombings, mortar attacks and beheadings” and which had been officially registered.
The tally excluded “missing persons” who were presumed to be dead. It did not include the deaths during the three-week US invasion of 2003, during which as many as 30,000 Iraqi troops were killed. It also excludes deaths during the first 20 months of occupation. Thus, it does not count the thousands of fighters and civilians killed in the US military operations, particularly in 2004, to suppress Iraqi resistance in cities such as Baghdad, Fallujah, Ramadi, Mosul, Najaf, Karbala and Basra.
Most importantly, the tally leaves out “indirect factors such as damage to infrastructure, health care and stress that caused thousands more to die”. In other words, it does not count the victims of US occupation who died because they could not get food, clean water, sanitation, electricity or medical treatment.
The death toll of 87,215 in the report is therefore only a small proportion of the true number of fatalities since March 2003. How many deaths occurred between March 2003 and early 2005? How many resistance fighters and civilians were buried without notifying the official death registrar? How many bodies were so mutilated that they were never documented or still lie beneath tonnes of rubble? How many of the estimated four million refugees and internally displaced have died? How many have lost their lives from the so-called “indirect”, “non-violent” causes?
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