CBC : Controversial study claims more than 600,000 killed in Iraq

Controversial study claims more than 600,000 killed in Iraq

CBC News | October 11, 2006

A research group that drew controversy two years ago over its estimates of Iraqi war dead has published another study that claims more than 600,000 have died because of the war.

"Deaths are occurring in Iraq now at a rate more than three times that from before the invasion of March 2003," Dr. Gilbert Burnham, lead author of the study, said in a statement.

The survey was conducted by a research team from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and published online in the medical journal The Lancet on Wednesday.

The fatality totals were based on interviews in Iraqi households and not from a body count.

Researchers gathered data from a sample of 1,849 Iraqi households with a total of 12,801 residents from late May to early July. That sample was used to extrapolate the total figure. The estimate deals with deaths up to July.

But the death figures are much higher than other estimates. The private organization called Iraqi Body Count has recorded about 44,000 to 49,000 civilian Iraqi deaths.

House-to-house survey

However, the group has acknowledged that those totals are based on media reports, which it says probably overlook "many if not most civilian casualties."

Burnham said the estimate was much higher than others because it was derived from a house-to-house survey rather than approaches that depend on body counts or media reports.

Asked by reporters about the study, U.S. President George W. Bush dismissed it as not credible.

Bush, who in the past has suggested 30,000 civilian deaths in Iraq, would not give a figure.

"I do know that a lot of innocent people have died," he said.

Two years ago, the research team released figures that said 100,000 had been killed because of the war.

But some criticized the survey for its methodology and questioned the results that were much higher than other estimates.

With files from the Associated Press