Iraqi Death Toll Uncountable

(AP) - At least 85,694 Iraqis lost their lives from 2004 to 2008 in violence, the Iraqi government said today in its first comprehensive tally released since the war began. Another 147,195 were wounded during that four-year period, says the Human Rights Ministry. The number includes Iraqi civilians, military, and police, but not insurgents, US troops, or other foreign forces or contractors. It also excludes the first months of the war after the 2003 invasion. More»

Cable from UN demanded answers, got no reply

(NEWSER) - In 2006, a group of US soldiers burst into a house in Ishaqi, Iraq, where they handcuffed and executed at least 10 people—including an infant and four other children, none older than five years old—then called an airstrike to cover up the evidence. Or at least that’s the conclusion a UN investigator reached, according to an unclassified diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks last week. The cable contains questions for US authorities, which they appear to have never answered, the investigator tells the McClatchy Newspapers . More»

Iraqi crackdown, US strikes helped

(NEWSER) - As the US approaches its end-of-year deadline for withdrawing all troops from Iraq, August saw a milestone: It was the first month since the US-led invasion began in March 2003 that saw no American military deaths. The previous record was one soldier death in December 2010, and a military spokesperson notes that there have been two other months that saw no hostile deaths—but did see at least one non-combat death, “which includes accidents or illness,” she tells AFP . Since the invasion began, 4,474 American troops have died. More»

Military logs show US did keep track

(NEWSER) - More from the analysis of WikiLeaks’ huge file dump: US military logs reveal 15,000 previously unrecorded civilian deaths in Iraq. As reported yesterday , the Iraq war logs show that, despite denying it did so, the US did keep records of Iraqi fatalities. Those fatalities totaled 109,032 between 2004 and 2009, of which 66,000 were civilians and 3,771 were “friendly” allied soldiers. Iraq Body Count, which monitors civilian deaths, concluded 15,000 of those civilian deaths had not yet been recorded. More»

(NEWSER) - Iraq's government has a put a number on the toll of violence in the country: 87,215 deaths since 2005. The number—provided to AP by a Health Ministry official—counts people killed in violent attacks such as bombings through February. It doesn't count deaths attributed to factors such as infrastructure damage or poor health care. Official figures don't exist before 2005, but AP puts the total number of violent deaths at more than 110,000 since the US-led invasion in 2003. More»