American news broadcasts carried on satellite television channels in the Middle East frequently report not only the numbers of coalition forces killed in Iraq, but also their names and other biographical information. Documenting even the numbers of civilians killed in the Iraq War has been far more difficult. However, the website, www.IraqBodyCount.org, continues to struggle with the task.
According to information from Iraq Body Count (IBC), on every available indicator, the year tracked from March 2006-March 2007, has been by far the worst year for violence against civilians in Iraq since the invasion. It accounts for almost half (44 percent) of all violent civilian deaths, after the initial invasion phase occurred, in the recently-ended fourth year of the conflict. Mortar attacks that kill civilians have quadrupled in the last year (from 73 to 289). Massive bomb blasts that kill more than 50 people have nearly doubled in the last year (from 9 to 17). Fatal suicide bombs, car bombs and roadside bombing attacks have doubled in the last year (from 712 to 1,476). One in 160 of Baghdad’s 6.5 million population has been violently killed since the beginning of the war, representing 64 percent of the deaths recorded so far.
The ticker at www.IraqBodyCount.org, reads that the minimum number of civilians killed in the conflict is 65,411 and the maximum is 71,665. The site counts civilian deaths in the Iraq War since January 2003. IBC’s casualty figures are derived from a comprehensive survey of online media reports and eyewitness accounts. Where these sources report differing figures, the range — a minimum and a maximum — are given. All results are independently reviewed and error-checked by at least two members of the IBC project team, in addition to the original compiler, before publication.
IBC, based in London, was founded by Hamit Dardagan and John Sloboda and is run with a team of 16 volunteers. Dardagan has dedicated his life to the project and is its principal researcher and site manager. The tally of dead Iraqi civilians is updated daily on the IBC website, and it is considered, even by the Bush administration to be the most reliable record of the war’s toll on innocents.