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UN Concerned About Violence in Iraq; Study Says 655,000 Died as Result
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http://enews.voanews.com/t?r=279&c=654823&l=1009&ctl=145A97F:A6F02AD83191E160F353D635BC09FCCB9574F7DCC14957C0 Jan Egeland says
victims include police recruits, judges and lawyers





Jan Egeland The top United Nations humanitarian aid official says the
violence in Iraq is going unchecked, claiming about 100 lives per day.

Jan Egeland says the victims include police recruits, judges and
lawyers. He says women also have increasingly become the victims of
so-called honor crimes.

Egeland told reporters Wednesday in Geneva that 315,000 people in Iraq
have been displaced in the past eight months.

Also Wednesday, a study estimates that some 655,000 Iraqis have died
since the March 2003 invasion of their country as a result of the war.







Man walks by pool of blood at site of bomb blast in Baghdad's Camp
SaraThe study, published in the British journal The Lancet, says about
600,000 of those people died from violence, mostly gunfire. It says
deaths from car bombings also have increased.

Researchers also found a small increase in deaths from disease and
other causes.

The figure is far higher than other estimates.



The study was conducted by Iraqi and U.S. researchers who interviewed
residents of randomly selected households, and compared the mortality
rates to pre-war estimates.

In 2004, the same group published an estimate of 100,000 deaths in the
first 18 months after the U.S-led invasion of Iraq.

Last year, President Bush estimated that 30,000 Iraqis have died as a
result of the war.

Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.

 


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