Iraq ministry says coalition kills more civilians than insurgents do

By Nancy A. Youssef
Knight Ridder Newspapers

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Iraqi officials said the statistics proved that U.S. airstrikes intended for insurgents also were killing large numbers of civilians. Some say these casualties are undermining popular acceptance of the American-backed interim government.

U.S. military officials said they do everything possible to avoid killing civilians, but that it is inevitable when insurgents mingle with the general population.

According to the Health Ministry, the interim Iraqi government recorded 3,487 insurgency-related deaths in 15 of the country's 18 provinces from April 5, when the ministry began compiling the data, until Sept. 19. Of those, 328 were women and children. Another 13,720 Iraqis were injured, the ministry said.

Iraqi officials said about two-thirds of the Iraqi deaths were caused by multinational forces and police; the remaining third died from insurgent attacks. The ministry began separating attacks by multinational and police forces and insurgents June 10.

From that date until Sept. 10, 1,295 Iraqis were killed by multinational forces and police versus 516 killed by what the ministry called terrorist operations. The ministry defined terrorist operations as explosive devices in residential areas, car bombs or assassinations.

(A Knight Ridder editor in Washington, D.C., was unable to explain last night how officials determined who was responsible for deaths of civilians killed during battles between insurgents and multinational and Iraqi forces.)

The Health Ministry is convinced that nearly all of those reported dead are civilians or police and Iraqi national guardsmen, not insurgents. Most often, a family member wouldn't report it if his or her relative died fighting for rebel cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army militia or another insurgent force, and the relative would be buried immediately, said Dr. Shihab Ahmed Jassim, a member of the ministry's operations section.

"People who participate in the conflict don't come to the hospital. Their families are afraid they will be punished," said Dr. Yasin Mustaf, the assistant manager of al Kimdi Hospital near Baghdad's poor Sadr City neighborhood. "Usually, the innocent people come to the hospital. That is what the numbers show."

During the same period, 432 American soldiers were killed.

The ministry said it didn't have any statistics for the three provinces in the north: Arbil, Dohuk and Sulaimaniyah, ethnic Kurdish areas that generally have been more peaceful than the rest of the country.
 
The Health Ministry is the only organization that attempts to track deaths through government agencies. The U.S. military said it kept estimates, but it refused to release them. Ahmed al Rawi, the communications director of the International Committee of the Red Cross in Baghdad, said the organization didn't have the staffing to compile such information.

To compile the data, the Health Ministry called the directors general of the 15 provinces and asked how many deaths related to the war were reported at hospitals and morgues, which issue death certificates.

Still, Iraqi health and hospital officials agreed that the statistics captured only part of the death toll because families often bury their dead without telling any government agencies or are treated at facilities that don't report to the government. The numbers also exclude those whose bodies were too mutilated to be recovered at car bombings or other attacks, the ministry said.

Ministry officials said they didn't know how big the undercount was. "We have nothing to do with politics," Jassim said.

Other independent organizations have estimated that 7,000 to 12,000 Iraqis have been killed since May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared an end to major combat operations.

American military officials said "damage will happen" in their effort to wrest control of some areas from insurgents. They blamed the insurgents for embedding themselves in communities, saying that's endangering innocent people.

Lt. Col. Steve Boylan, a U.S. military spokesman, said the insurgents were living in residential areas, sometimes in homes filled with munitions.

"As long as they continue to do that, they are putting the residents at risk," Boylan said. "We will go after them."

Boylan said the military conducts intelligence to determine whether a home houses insurgents before striking it. While damage could happen, the airstrikes were "extremely precise," he said. And he said that any attacks by the multinational forces were "in coordination with the interim government."

Many Iraqis said they thought the numbers showed that the multinational forces disregarded their lives.

"The Americans do not care about the Iraqis. They don't care if they get killed, because they don't care about the citizens," said Abu Mohammed, 50, who was a major general in Saddam Hussein's army in Baghdad. "The Americans keep criticizing Saddam for the mass graves. How many graves are the Americans making in Iraq?"

Others blame the multinational forces for allowing security to disintegrate, inviting terrorists from everywhere and threatening the lives of everyday Iraqis.

"Anyone who hates America has come here to fight: Saddam's supporters, people who don't have jobs, other Arab fighters. All these people are on our streets," said Dr. Walid Hamed, another member of the operations section of the Health Ministry. "But everyone is afraid of the Americans, not the fighters. And they should be."

U.S. officials said any allegations that soldiers had recklessly killed Iraqi citizens were investigated at the Iraqi Assistance Center in Baghdad.

"There is no way to refute" such stories, said Robert Callahan, a spokesman at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. "All you can do is tell them the truth and hope it eventually will get through."