US and UK governments criticised over Iraqi death count

The British and American governments have been criticised over their failure to establish a count of civilian deaths in Iraq.

A group of international health experts told the British Medical Journal (BMJ) that the British government had relied on figures from Iraq's Ministry of Health. They said this was "unacceptable" because the figures did not take into account deaths during the first twelve months of the US-led invasion of Iraq, only included violent deaths that were reported and did not allow for "reliable attribution" between different causes of death and injury.

The group, which included experts from the UK, US, Canada, Spain, Italy and Australia, said that the policy of both the US and UK governments had been "wholly irresponsible" and called for an independent inquiry into war-related casualties in Iraq.

Research conducted by the Lancet suggested that Iraq had suffered around 100,000 excess deaths since the 2003 invasion. However, it was reported that the government had rejected the survey as "unreliable".

According to reports, the figures used by the Foreign Office put the number of Iraqi civilians killed between April and December 2004 at 5,144. The Iraq Body Count, an independent database, puts the death toll somewhere between 16,231 and 18,509 from the beginning of the war in March 2003.

A Foreign Office spokesman told the BMJ that they believed the Iraqi Ministry of Health figures were "the best available in an uncertain situation". The spokesman added, "in the current security climate, more accurate research is not feasible."

The experts have called for a large, scientifically independent study in order to "remove uncertainties that remain". However, both the British and American governments have said that they were not legally obliged to count civilian casualties.

Professor Klim McPherson, public health epidemiologist at Oxford University told the BMJ: "Basically this is a response to the government's continuing procrastination. Counting casualties can help to save lives both now and in the future - we have waited too long for this information."

(KMcA/SP)