BACKGROUND: Armed violence is a major public health and humanitarian problem in Iraq. In this descriptive statistical analysis we aimed to describe for the first time Iraqi civilian @entity204 caused by perpetrators of armed violence during the first 5 years of the Iraq war: over time; by weapon used; by region (governorate); and by victim demographics. METHODS AND FINDINGS: We analyzed the Iraq Body Count database of 92,614 Iraqi civilian direct @entity204 from armed violence occurring from March 20, 2003 through March 19, 2008, of which Unknown perpetrators caused 74% of @entity204 (n=68,396), Coalition forces 12% (n=11,516), and Anti-Coalition forces 11% (n=9,954). We analyzed the subset of 60,481 civilian @entity204 from 14,196 short-duration events of lethal violence to link individual civilian @entity204 to events involving perpetrators and their methods. One-third of civilian violent death was from extrajudicial executions by Unknown perpetrators; quadratic regression shows these @entity204 progressively and disproportionately increased as @entity204 from other forms of violence increased across Iraq's governorates. The highest average number of civilians killed per event in which a civilian died were in Unknown perpetrator suicide bombings targeting civilians (19 per lethal event) and Coalition aerial bombings (17 per lethal event). In temporal analysis, numbers of civilian @entity204 from Coalition air attacks, and @entity1 and @entity1 @entity204 from Coalition forces, peaked during the invasion. We applied a @entity1 and @entity1 "Dirty War Index" (DWI), measuring the proportion of @entity1 and @entity1 among civilian @entity204 of known demographic status, to the 22,066 civilian victims identified as @entity1 , @entity1 , or @entity1 to indicate relatively indiscriminate perpetrator effects. DWI findings suggest the most indiscriminate effects on @entity1 and @entity1 were from Unknown perpetrators using mortar fire (DWI =79) and nonsuicide vehicle bombs (DWI =54) and from Coalition air attacks (DWI =69). Coalition forces had higher @entity1 and @entity1 DWIs than Anti-Coalition forces, with no evidence of decrease over 2003-2008, for all weapons combined and for small arms gunfire, specifically. CONCLUSIONS: Most Iraqi civilian @entity204 during 2003-2008 of the Iraq war were inflicted by Unknown perpetrators, primarily through extrajudicial executions that disproportionately increased in regions with greater numbers of @entity204 . Unknown perpetrators using suicide bombs, vehicle bombs, and mortars had highly lethal and indiscriminate effects on the Iraqi civilians they targeted. Deaths caused by Coalition forces of Iraqi civilians, @entity1 , and @entity1 peaked during the invasion period, with relatively indiscriminate effects from aerial weapons. Please see later in the article for the Editors' Summary.

XXXX of Iraqi civilians, 2003-2008: analysis by perpetrator, weapon, time, and location.

@entity1 :: ('9606', 'Species') :: ['men', 'Child', 'women', 'children', 'woman', 'Woman', 'child'] @entity204 :: ('MESH:D003643', 'Disease') :: ['violent deaths', 'deaths']
@entity204 :: (MESH:D003643,Disease) :: ['Violent deaths']
