http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=37144Listed below are some statistics regarding the investigations by IBC:
• 24,864 civilians were reported killed in the first two years, of which 20% were women and children and 50% were recorded in Baghdad alone.
• The post-invasion body count for year one was twice that of year two. (11,351 to 6,215)
• US led forces did 37% of the killing while anti-occupation forces killed 9% of civilian victims.
• Criminal violence accounted for 36% of post-invasion deaths.
• Over ½ of the deaths (53%) involved explosive devices.
• Air strikes caused 64% of explosive deaths during the invasion.
• 42,500 civilians reported wounded the first 2 years.
• As of March 2005, of average 34 civilian Iraqi’s have met violent death every day since the 2003 invasion.
Author’s note:
The reason for the following is to give you an idea of what goes on daily in Baghdad. It you are squeamish about reading of death you might want to skip the following excerpt of a report written by Robert Fisk of the Information Clearing House, Daily News Digest, UK. The report references the main mortuary in Baghdad, Iraq.
Secrets of the morgue - Baghdad's body countBy Robert Fisk
-- -- The Baghdad morgue is a fearful place of heat and stench and mourning, the cries of relatives echoing down the narrow, fetid laneway behind the pale-yellow brick medical centre where the authorities keep their computerized records. So many corpses are being brought to the mortuary that human remains are stacked on top of each other. Unidentified bodies must be buried within days for lack of space - but the municipality is so overwhelmed by the number of killings that it can no longer provide the vehicles and personnel to take the remains to the cemeteries.
July was the bloodiest month in Baghdad's modern history - in all, 1,100 bodies were brought to the city's mortuary; executed for the most part, eviscerated, stabbed, bludgeoned, tortured to death.
Of the dead, 963 were men - many with their hands bound, their eyes taped and bullets in their heads - and the remainder women. The statistics are as shameful as they are horrifying. For these are the men and women we supposedly came to "liberate" - and about whose fate we do not care.
The figures for this month cannot, of course, yet be calculated. But last Sunday, the mortuary received the bodies of 36 men and women, all killed by violence. By 8am on Monday, nine more human remains had been received. By midday, the figure had reached 25.