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For troops in the U.S.-led Multinational Coalition , the Death Toll is carefully tracked and updated daily, and the names and photographs of those killed in action as well as in accidents have been published widely. Regarding the Iraqis, however, information on both military and civilian casualties is both less accurate and less reliable, and given the political significance of these figures and the varied agendas of all parties, no source can be considered free of bias. Estimates of casualty levels are available from reporters on the scene, from officials of involved organizations, and from groups that summarize information on incidents reported in the news media. The word " Casualties " in its most general sense includes the injured as well as the dead. Accounts of the number of coalition wounded vary widely, partly because it is not obvious what should be counted: should only those injuries serious enough to put a soldier out of commission be included? Do illnesses or injuries caused by accidents count, or should the focus be restricted to wounds caused by hostile engagement? Sources using different definitions may arrive at very different numbers, and sometimes the precise definition is not clearly specified. As for the Iraqis, where even the death toll has only been very roughly estimated, it appears that no one has attempted to count the wounded. OVERVIEW DETAILED STATISTICS
IRAQI MILITARY CASUALTIES Although there are no accurate counts of dead Iraqi soldiers, and U.S. Central Command has made few statements on the subject, U.S. General , 2003 , suggesting that a total in the tens of thousands is not unlikely for the entire six-week period of major combat. (Following that period, the Iraqi military was effectively disbanded.) In late May 2003 , one reporter for The Guardian estimated that between 13,500 and 45,000 Iraqi soldiers were killed by American and British troops during six weeks of war {Link without Title} . A later, more frequently quoted study published in October, 2003 estimated that there were between 4,895 and 6,370 Iraqi military deaths {Link without Title} . The study explained that to arrive at this number, they had adjusted the underlying incident reports from the field by reducing each count by anywhere from 20% to 60%, based on their own reliability assessments, in order to "control for casualty inflation — a prevalent form of bias." Thus, the actual reports they were summarizing totalled between 6,119 and 15,925 deaths. CIVILIAN CASUALTIES Iraqi civilians have suffered the bulk of fatalities in this conflict. Estimates of the number of civilian deaths are better documented than the estimates of Iraqi military casualties, but they still reveal significant uncertainty. (Note that the groups making these estimates all define the word ''civilian'' to exclude the various paramilitary forces operating in Iraq as well as the official military forces that existed under Saddam Hussein's regime.) One study done by public health experts from the Lancet medical journal published on 29 October 2004 , found that an estimated 100,000 Iraqi civilians had died since the US invasion began. A survey was taken from nearly 1000 Iraqi households in which the residents were asked how many people lived there and how many births and deaths there had been since the war began. They then compared the death rate with the average from the 15 months before the war. Experts from both the US and Iraq found that Iraqi civilians were 2.5 times more likely to die after the invasion. They also found that most of the violent deaths were due to air-strikes by coalition forces. Falluja residents accounted for 2/3rds of violent deaths. Excluding Falluja the death rate was lowered to 1.5. At that rate, the study found the number of deaths would be at 98,000. Since the war began, civilian violent deaths were found to be 58 times more likely than in the 15 months preceding the war. {Link without Title} The United Nations estimate of civilian casualties of the war in Iraq was 100,000 as of March 30, 2005. {Link without Title} Another study by an Iraqi group, the "People's Kifah, or Struggle Against Hegemony," conducted a detailed survey in September and October of . This would not include civilian deaths since that time, nor civilians killed in the Kurdish areas of Iraq. A western group, the Iraq Body Count Project , compiles ''reported'' Iraqi civilian deaths that were caused directly by coalition military action, as well as deaths caused directly by the Iraqi Insurgency (the Iraqi Body Count project claims that the Occupying Authority is responsible to prevent these deaths under international law.) It shows a minimum estimate of 34,139 and a high of 38,280 as of April 14 , 2006 . This estimate only includes incidents that were reported by at least two sources in the press. They claim the US and its allies are responsible for 37% of the 24,865 deaths. This works out to 9,200 deaths. The remaining 15,665 deaths are attibuted to the insurgency, foreign terrorists, Iraqi forces, and crime. {Link without Title} As for the major combat phase of the war from March–April 2003 , Abu Dhabi TV reported on April 8 , 2003 that Iraqi sources claimed 1,252 civilians had been killed and 5,103 had been wounded. In comparison, the Iraq Body Count Project estimated that through April 9 , 2003 , between 996 and 1,174 civilians had been killed. Casualties due to poor security after the invasion In and surrounding provinces, to tally violent deaths since President Bush declared an end to major combat operations. In Baghdad alone, they counted 4,279 such deaths in a city of 5.6 million; these deaths generally do not include combatants, because they are typically not brought to morgues. This death rate translates to 76 killings per 100,000 people, compared to 39 in crime-ridden Bogotá , Colombia , 7.5 in New York City , 3.0 in Baghdad itself in 2002 (the year before the war), and the international average rate of 5.5. Morgues surveyed in other parts of Iraq also reported large increases in the homicide rate. For example, the rate in the province of Karbala, south of Baghdad, rose from an average of one homicide per month in 2002 to an average of 55 per month in the year following the invasion; in Tikrit, north of Baghdad, where there were no homicides in 2002 , the rate had grown to an average of 17 per month; in the northern province of Kirkuk, the rate had increased from 3 per month in 2002 to 34 per month in the survey period. Non-Iraqi civilian casualties Many non-combatants from both coalition and non-coalition countries have also been killed or wounded, including more than 60 Journalist s and more than 150 international Aid Personnel and foreign civilians. Some of the 18-20,000 ( {Link without Title} {Link without Title} ) , and non coalition countries like South Africa and Germany . However, the nation with the largest number of contractor deaths is the United States, with at least 127 killed. In addition, although reporting on this situation has been quite sparse, one article {Link without Title} reported that at least 80 such contractors recruited to work in Iraq for American companies were killed during a period of eight days in early April 2004 — more than the roughly 70 coalition troops who were killed in the same period. Excess Mortality Study A study published in The Lancet on 29 October 2004 contains the following Summary: Background Methods Findings Interpretation See Lancet Study for more details of the methodology and subsequent controversy about the study. COALITION MILITARY CASUALTIES , return to Dover AFB . The Pentagon has been reluctant to release photos of caskets but was forced due to the Freedom Of Information Act .]] Casualties among the coalition military forces have been tracked with greater accuracy. As of , 2003 that major combat was over (see Mission Accomplished ). Troops killed ''in action'' account for 2,048 of the coalition casualties, including 1,893 of the U.S. casualties (78.3% of all casualties). Since the official handover of power to the Iraq Interim Government on June 28 , 2004 , coalition soldiers have continued to come under attack in towns across Iraq. Coalition casualties in the 2003 – 2006 conflict are now more than six times those of the 1990 – 1991 Gulf War . (In the Gulf War, coalition forces suffered around 378 deaths, and among the Iraqi military, tens of thousands were killed, along with thousands of civilians.) As a result of the second Iraq war and War in Afghanistan, the total US annual military casualty rate has tripled and returned to its 1989 rate of approximately 1700 casualties per year. Troops fallen ill, injured, or wounded The total number of non-fatal coalition casualties of all kinds has never been comprehensively reported. For U.S. troops only, though, as of 's figures showed that 7,245 had been wounded in combat in Iraq by that time. The unspecified fraction of the former group who were evacuated from Afghanistan would not be included in the count for this conflict. However, estimating that the 9-to-1 ratio of U.S. troops ''killed'' in Iraq vs. in Afghanistan by then would also hold for ''non-fatal'' casualties, then about 15,000 of the medical evacuations would be from Iraq, so the total number of non-fatal U.S. casualties in Iraq was roughly 22,000 as of September 15 , 2004 . Statistics on U.S. soldiers ''wounded in action'', however, are disclosed regularly: according to the Pentagon, 17,762 have been wounded in action through 1 May , 2006 , of whom 8,137 were wounded severely enough that they could not return to action within 72 hours. In addition, the study on Posttraumatic Stress Disorder found that the percentage of troops suffering from PTSD increased by between 7-10% after deployment to Iraq, which would represent 25,000 to 35,000 initial periodcases of PTSD among the roughly 350,000 U.S. troops who have served in Iraq. Information on injuries suffered by troops of other coalition countries is less readily available, but a statement in Hansard indicated that 2,703 U.K. soldiers had been medically evacuated from Iraq for wounds or injuries as of October 4 , 2004 and that 155 U.K. troops were wounded in combat in the initial invasion {Link without Title} . ''Nightline'' controversy Ted Koppel , host of ABC 's '' Nightline '', devoted his entire show on April 30 , 2004 , to reading the names of 721 of the 737 U.S. troops who had died thus far. He did not mention deaths in Afghanistan . (The show hadn't been able to confirm the remaining 16 names.) Claiming that this would constitute a political statement, the Sinclair Broadcast Group , a media company whose executives have strongly supported President Bush , took the unusual action of barring the seven ABC-affiliated stations it controls from airing the show. The decision to censor the broadcast drew criticism from both sides, including members of the armed forces, opponents of the war, MoveOn.org , and most notably Republican Senator John McCain , who denounced the move as "unpatriotic" and "a gross disservice to the public" SEE ALSO
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