Health experts rap US, UK over counting Iraqi dead

LONDON - Public health experts criticised the United States and Britain on Friday for failing to record the number of Iraqi civilians killed since the US-led invasion and called for an independent inquiry.

"We believe that the joint US/UK failure to make any effort to monitor Iraqi casualties is ... wholly irresponsible," they said in a statement published online by the British Medical Journal.

The two dozen experts from Britain, the United States, Australia, Canada, Spain and Italy said the exact count of the Iraqis killed since the invasion in March 2003 would help provide a better understanding of the causes of deaths.

"Counting casualties can help to save lives both now and in the future," the statement said.

Calling for an immediate independent inquiry into Iraqi war-related casualties, they said relying on data from the Iraqi Ministry of Health was unacceptable because Iraqi sources were likely to underestimate casualties for several reasons.

The Health Ministry figures do not include deaths during the first 12 months after the invasion.

Also, only violence-related deaths are reported through the health system and the experts said the figures often did not allow for reliable attribution of different causes of death.

Iraqi Health Ministry numbers, based on figures from hospital mortuaries, show 3274 civilians were killed from July 1, 2004, to January 1, 2005.

Other estimates vary widely. Iraq Body Count, which is run by academics and peace activists and based on reports from at least two media sources, estimate between 16,231 and 18,509 Iraqis have died since the conflict started.

A household survey done in Iraq by US scientists, which was rejected by the British government as unreliable, put war-related civilian deaths at about 100,000 since the invasion.

One of the experts, Professor Klim McPherson, a public health epidemiologist at Oxford University, said their statement was a response to the government's continuing procrastination.

"Everybody who works in this field knows you don't rely on data from hospital mortuaries because it is massively low," he told Reuters.

But a spokesman from Britain's Foreign Office said it was not feasible to do more accurate research in the current security climate in Iraq.

"We continue to feel that the Iraqi Ministry of Health figures are the best available in an uncertain situation, being based on actual headcount instead of extrapolation," the spokesman said.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has rejected calls for an independent inquiry. An official inquiry into the number of Iraqi dead could embarrass Blair ahead of a general election expected in May in a country that was mostly opposed to the war.

McPherson said an estimate of 100,000 deaths was alarming but there is no reason why it should be biased.

"Apart from the practical arguments, the principled ones stand and will stand. Have we not learned any lessons from history of sweeping alarming numbers of deaths under the carpet?" he said in an editorial.

- REUTERS