Over
37,000 civilians Killed In Iraq
By Ahmed Janabi
04 August, 2004
Aljazeera
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.
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.
Its calculation
was based on deaths among the Iraqi civilian population only, and did
not count losses sustained by the Iraqi military and paramilitary forces.
The deputy general
secretary and spokesperson of the 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 unclear.
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.
"I am seizing
the opportunity of talking to Aljazeera.net to request that the US occupation
authorities reveal the destiny of our worker, who was arrested and then
disappeared"
"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 at 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 figures, 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.