Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: BBC news: '25,000 civilians' killed in Iraq

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4692589.stm
Nearly 25,000 civilians have died violently in Iraq since the US-led
invasion in March 2003, a report says.
The dossier, based on media reports, says US-led forces were
responsible for more than a third of the deaths.
The survey was carried out by the UK-based Iraq Body Count and Oxford
Research Group - which includes academics and peace activists.
The Iraqi government criticised their conclusions, saying Iraqis were
most at risk from terrorists who target them.
The Dossier on Civilian Casualties in Iraq 2003-2005 says 37% of all
non-combatant deaths were caused by the US-led coalition.
The ever-mounting Iraqi death toll is the forgotten cost of the
decision to go to war in Iraq
John Sloboda
Report author
Most of these occurred during the invasion phase, which it counts as
ending on 1 May 2003.
But killings by anti-occupation and criminal elements also increased
steadily over the entire two-year period.
Insurgents are said to have caused 9% of the deaths, while
post-invasion criminal violence was responsible for another 36%.
Targets
The number of civilians who have died has almost doubled in the second
year from the first, according to the report.
Almost a fifth of the 24,865 deaths were women or children and nearly
half of all the civilian deaths were reported in the capital Baghdad.
"On average, 34 ordinary Iraqis have met violent deaths every day since
the invasion of March 2003," said John Sloboda, one of the authors of
the report.
"The ever-mounting Iraqi death toll is the forgotten cost of the
decision to go to war in Iraq," he added.
Mr Sloboda also said: "It remains a matter of the gravest concern that,
nearly two-and-a-half years on, neither the US nor the UK governments
have begun to systematically measure the impact of their actions in
terms of human lives destroyed."
The Iraqi government welcomed the attention the report gave to Iraqi
victims, but said it was a mistake to claim that the "plague of
terrorism" had killed fewer Iraqis that the multi-national forces.
"The international forces try to avoid civilian casualties, whereas the
terrorists target civilians and try to kill as many of them as they
can," it said in a statement.
"The root cause of Iraq's suffering is terrorism, inherited from
Saddam's fascist regime and from mistaken fundamentalist ideology.
"Everybody knows that international forces are necessary in Iraq, on a
temporary basis and they will leave Iraq at a time chosen by Iraqis,
not in response to terrorist pressure."
'Failure'
The IBC wants to see an independent commission set up in Iraq to give
the best estimate of civilian deaths and full details of how each
person died.
Human rights groups say the occupying powers in Iraq have failed in
their duty to catalogue the deaths of civilians.
But the US and Britain say the chaos of war-torn Iraq has made it
impossible to get accurate information.
More than 1,700 US soldiers and dozens of other coalition troops are
known to have died.
The Iraqi government says 1,300 Iraqi police and military have been
killed since security forces were set up in late 2003. But US
think-tank the Brookings Institute puts the figure at almost twice this
number.
More than half of all civilian deaths were said to have been caused by
explosive devices, which disproportionately affected children.
At least 42,500 civilians were reported to have been injured.
The UK-based Iraq Body Count - run by academics and peace activists -
is one of the most widely-quoted sources of information on the civilian
death toll in Iraq.
The Oxford Research Group describes itself as an independent
organisation "which seeks to develop effective methods whereby people
can bring about positive change on issues of national and international
security by non-violent means".

they can," it said in a statement.
Una differenza che quegli idioti di Iraq Body Count e gli autori del
rapporto purtropopo non hanno mai capito.
-Stefano