Order Code RS22537
Updated May 16, 2008
Iraqi Civilian Casualties Estimates
Hannah Fischer
Information Research Specialist
Knowledge Services Group
Summary
This report presents various governmental and nongovernmental estimates of Iraqi
civilian dead and wounded. The Department of Defense (DOD) regularly updates total
U.S. military death and wounded statistics from Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), as
reflected in CRS Report RS21578, Iraq: Summary of U.S. Casualties. However, no Iraqi
or U.S. government office regularly releases publically available statistics on Iraqi
civilian deaths or civilians who have been wounded. Statistics on Iraqi civilian dead and
wounded are sometimes available through alternative sources, such as nonprofit
organizations, or through statements made by officials to the press. Because these
estimates are based on varying time periods and have been created using differing
methodologies, readers should exercise caution when using these statistics and should
look on them as guideposts rather than as statements of fact. See also CRS Report
RS22532, Iraqi Police and Security Forces Deaths Estimates. This report will be
updated as needed.
Total or Annual Estimates of Iraqi Civilian Deaths
The Department of Defense (DOD) has not released a composite estimate of Iraqi
civilian deaths during Operation Iraqi Freedom, though in the report Measuring Stability
and Security in Iraq, it has released a chart containing two separate estimates of Iraqi
civilian deaths from January 2006 to February 2008.1 The first estimate is derived from
coalition and Iraqi reports of civilian deaths, whereas the second estimate is derived from
the Iraq Significant Activities (SIGACTS) III database, which includes coalition reports
only. The DOD noted in the December 2007 update of Measuring Stability and Security
in Iraq that “host nation reports capture some types of deaths on which the Coalition does
not have visibility, in particular, murders and deaths in locations where Coalition forces
1 U.S. Department of Defense, Multi-National Corps-Iraq, Measuring Stability and Security in
Iraq: December 2007 Report to Congress in Accordance with the Department of Defense
Appropriations Act 2007 (Section 9010), June 2007, p. 18, at [http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/
pdfs/FINAL-SecDef%20Signed-20071214.pdf].

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are not present.”2 In addition to using Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq, we have
also used an approximation of the updated casualty estimates for March 2008 used by
General David. H. Petraeus in his April 2008 testimony to Congress.
While the chart provides a guideline to Iraqi civilian deaths trends, the data behind
the chart has not been released. Using estimates, CRS has reproduced an approximation
of the DOD’s chart in the figure below.
Figure 1. Iraqi Civilian Deaths, January 2006 - March 2008
Coalition and Iraqi Reports
Coalition Reports Only
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Source: CRS rendition of DOD graph, as derived from Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq,
[http://www.defenselink.mil/pubs/pdfs/Master%20%20Mar08%20-%20final%20signed.pdf]. Multi-National
Corps - Iraq Sptrategic Plans Assessments Iraq Significant Activities (SIGACTS) III database (Coalition
Reports Only) and (Coalition and Iraqi Reports) as of February 23, 2008. (End of the month February 2008
projected.)
For some time, the United Nations attempted to release comprehensive statistics on
Iraqi civilian deaths. From August 2005 to March 2007, the United Nations Assistance
Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) released a series of quarterly reports on human rights in Iraq
that included sections on Iraqi civilian casualties. On April 25, 2007, however, the Iraqi
government announced its intention to cease providing civilian casualty figures to the
United Nations.3 Ivana Vuco, a UN human rights officer, stated, “[Iraqi] government
officials had made clear during discussions that they believed releasing high casualty
numbers would make it more difficult to quell unrest.”4 The most recent UNAMI report
on human rights, released on October 11, 2007, and concerning the period between April -
June 2007, expressed regret that “for this reporting period, [UNAMI] was again unable
2 Ibid.
3 Tina Susman, “Iraq won’t give casualty figures to U.N.,” Chicago Tribune, April 26, 2007,
p.12.
4 Ibid.

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to persuade the Government of Iraq to release data on casualties compiled by the Ministry
of Health and its other institutions. UNAMI continues to maintain that making such data
public is in the public interest.”5
In a recent interview with the Boston Globe, Rear Admiral Gregory Smith, the chief
U.S. military spokesman, confirmed Iraqi ministry civilian death tolls estimates that have
risen from a low of 568 in December 2007 and 541 in January 2008 to roughly 721 in
February 2008 and 1,082 in March 2008.6 “There was somewhere on the order of a 25
or 30 percent increase in the number of civilian casualties when you consider March
compared to February,” Smith said, although “the numbers are still nowhere near what
they had been last summer.”7 Reuters reports that the Iraqi Health Ministry figures showed
968 civilian deaths in April 2008 and that two hospitals in Sadr City have received 421
bodies, many of which have been civilians, since late March.8
Table 1. Annual or Total Iraqi Civilian Deaths Estimates
Iraq Body Count
83,221 - 90,782
March 19, 2003 - May 2, 2008
Iraq Coalition Casualty Count
41,962
April 28, 2005 - May 2, 2008
Brookings Iraq Index
104,317
May 2003 - March 2008
The Associated Press
31,245 dead
April 2005 - February 13, 2008
35,436 wounded
The Iraq Family Health Study (the “WHO study”)
151,000
March 2003 - June 2006
The Lancet, “Mortality after the 2003 Invasion of Iraq”
426,369 - 793,663
March 19, 2003 - July 31, 2006
Source: Prepared by CRS with data from noted sources.
Three cluster studies of violence-related mortality in Iraq have recently been
undertaken. The first two studies were both conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins
University and Baghdad’s Al-Mustansiriya University and are commonly referred to in
the press as “the Lancet studies” because they were published in the British medical
journal of that name. The third study was conducted by a consortium of researchers, many
of whom are associated with the World Health Organization, and so the study is
commonly referred to as “the WHO study” in the press.
5 United Nations Assistance Mission to Iraq, Human Rights Report, 1 April - 20 June 2007, at
[http://www.uniraq.org/FileLib/misc/HR%20Report%20Apr%20Jun%202007%20EN.pdf].
6 Farah Stockman and Bryan Bender, “Iraq violence up as troop levels drop; Value of the surge
debated,” The Boston Globe, April 7, 2008, p. A1.
7 Ibid.
8 “Iraq wrapup 4 — April Iraq’s deadliest month since last August,” Reuters, April 30, 2008.

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The first of these studies, published in 2004, used a cluster sample survey of
households in Iraq to develop an estimate ranging from 8,000 to 194,000 civilian
casualties due to violent deaths since the start of the war.9 This report has come under
some criticism for its methodology, which may not have accounted for the long-term
negative health effects of the Saddam Hussein era. Former British Foreign Minister Jack
Straw has written a formal Ministerial Response rejecting the findings of the first Lancet
report on the grounds that the data analyzed were inaccurate.10
The second study, published in 2006, increased the number of clusters surveyed from
33 to 47 and reported an estimate of between 426,369 and 793,663 Iraqi civilian deaths
from violent causes since the beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom.11 This article, too,
has sparked some controversy.12 Stephen Moore, a consultant for Gorton Moore
International, objected to the methods used by the researchers, commenting in the Wall
Street Journal that the Lancet article lacked some of the hallmarks of good research: a
small margin of error, a record of the demographics of respondents (so that one can be
sure one has captured a fair representation of an entire population), and a large number
of cluster points.13 However, documents written by the UK Ministry of Defence’s chief
scientific advisor have come to light, which called the survey’s methods “close to best
practice” and “robust.”14
In the third and most recent study, a team of investigators from the Federal Ministry
of Health in Baghdad, the Kurdistan Ministry of Planning, the Kurdistan Ministry of
Health, the Central Organization for Statistics and Information Technology in Baghdad,
and the World Health Organization formed the Iraq Family Health Survey (IFHS) Study
Group to research violence-related mortality in Iraq.15 In their nationally representative
cluster study, interviewers visited 89.4% of 1086 household clusters; the household
response rate was 96.2%. They concluded that there had been an estimated 151,000
violence-related deaths from March 2003 through June 2006 and that violence was the
main cause of death for men between the ages of 15 and 59 years during the first three
years after the 2003 invasion. This study seems now to be widely cited for violence-
related mortality rates in Iraq. Neither the Lancet studies nor the IFHS study make an
9 Les Roberts, Ridyah Lafta, Richard Garfield et al., “Mortality Before and After the 2003
Invasion of Iraq: Cluster Sample Survey,” The Lancet, October 29, 2004, 364 (9448), pp. 1857-
1864.
10 Jack Straw, Written U.K. Ministerial Statement Responding to a Lancet Study on Iraqi
Casualty Numbers, November 16, 2004, at
[http://www.fco.gov.uk/en/newsroom/latest-news/?view=News&id=1541252].
11 Gilbert Burnham, Riyadh Lafta, Shannon Doocy et al., “Mortality After the 2003 Invasion of
Iraq: A Cross-Sectional Cluster Sample Survey,” The Lancet, October 21, 2006, 368 (9545), pp.
1421-1429.
12 Sabrina Tavernise and Donald G. McNeil, Jr., “Iraqi Dead May Total 600,000, Study Says,”
New York Times, October 11, 2006, p. A16.
13 Steven E. Moore, “655,000 War Dead?,” Wall Street Journal, October 18, 2006, p. A.20.
14 Newsday, “High Death Toll Backed,” March 27, 2007, p. A25.
15 Iraq Family Health Survey Study Group, “Violence-Related Mortality in Iraq from 2002 to
2006,” The New England Journal of Medicine, January 31, 2008, pp. 484-492.

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effort to distinguish different victims of violence, such as civilians versus police or
security force members.
The Associated Press has also kept a database of Iraqi civilian and security forces
dead and wounded since April 2005. According to the AP database, between April 2005
and February 13, 2008, 31,245 Iraqi civilians have died and another 35,436 have been
wounded.16
A number of nonprofit groups have released unofficial estimates of Iraqi civilian
deaths. The Iraq Body Count (IBC) is one source often cited by the media; it bases its
online casualty estimates on media reports of casualties, some of which may involve
security forces as well as civilians. As of March 10, 2007, the IBC estimated that between
83,221 and 90,782 civilians had died as a result of military action.17 The IBC documents
each of the casualties it records with a media source and provides a minimum and a
maximum estimate.
The Brookings Institution has used modified numbers from the UN Human Rights
Report, the Iraq Body Count, General Petraeus’s congressional testimony given on
September 10-11, 2007, and other sources to develop its own composite estimate for Iraqi
civilians who have died by violence. By combining all of these sources by date,
Brookings Institution estimates that between May 2003 and February 2008, 104,317 Iraqi
civilians have died.18
Finally, the Iraq Coalition Casualty Count (ICCC) is another well-known non-profit
that tracks Iraqi civilian and Iraqi security forces deaths using an IBC-like method of
posting media reports of deaths. ICCC, like IBC, is prone to the kind of errors likely
when using media reports for data: some deaths may not be reported in the media, while
other deaths may be reported more than once. The ICCC does have one rare feature: it
separates police and soldier deaths from civilian deaths. The ICCC estimates that there
were 41,962 civilian deaths from April 28,2005 through March 10, 2008.19
16 Personal communication with Associated Press, February 13, 2008.
17 Iraq Body Count at [http://www.iraqbodycount.net]. IBC is a nongovernmental organization
managed by researchers and volunteers.
18 Brookings Institution, Iraq Index: Tracking Reconstruction and Security in Post-Saddam Iraq,
March 3, 2008, p. 5 at [http://www.brookings.edu/saban/~/media/Files/Centers/Saban/
Iraq%20Index/index.pdf].
19 Iraq Coalition Casualty Count at [http://icasualties.org/oif/IraqiDeaths.aspx]. ICCC is a
nongovernmental organization managed by researchers and volunteers.

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