As we count down to the next US assault on Falluja, the online monitor for Iraqi civilian casualties Iraq Body Count has brought out a timely analysis of the human cost of the last major attack on the city. Its report claims that 600 civilians, of whom over 300 were women and children, were killed during the April siege. Local doctors reported a total of 800 dead at the time, while early estimates from the Iraqi Health Ministry listed just 280 dead. Over the past few months, IBC has set about reconciling the two figures.
The group's researchers work by investigating every media report of a fatal civilian casualty during the Iraq war and its aftermath, trying to match local medical reports and produce a more reliable tally than those provided by the US army or the Iraqi Health Ministry. An exhaustive day-by-day archive of reported deaths in Falluja is available from today. The site also lists 3,000 named civilians who have died since the invasion and estimates the total civilian death count in Iraq to be between 13,908 and 16,033.
