More than 34,000 Iraqis killed last year, U.N. says

NEW YORK — Estimates for the number of civilians killed in Iraq last year range from a government-reported low of about 12,000 to nearly three times that figure.

On Tuesday, the same day nearly 100 people died in bombings and gunfire, the United Nations estimated that 34,452 civilians were killed in the violence that is engulfing their country, as compared with the 12,357 civilians reported killed in 2006 by the Iraqi government.

The U.N. relies on numbers from the Iraqi Health Ministry and the Medico-Legal Institute of Baghdad, according to Farhan Haq, an associate spokesman at U.N. headquarters. The report only counted civilians. The figure jibes with Los Angeles Times estimates that about 100 people a day have perished in political violence since the bombing of a revered Shiite shrine last February.

The statistics attributed to the Iraqi government are from a compilation of numbers from the Interior and Health ministries. With security force deaths, the government estimates the total number of Iraqis killed at 13,896.

The country's Shiite-dominated leadership has labeled the U.N. figures "inaccurate and exaggerated." Dr. Hakem al-Zamili, deputy health minister, said the U.N. "might be taking the figures from people who are opposed to the government or to the Americans."

Without a reliable government and police structure, body counts are nearly impossible, said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

"Everyone counts casualties according to their own public interests," he said, not to mention vastly different methodologies that often can't even decide on a good definition of the city limits of Baghdad.

In its September 2006 issue, The Lancet, an independent and authoritative journal, published a study on mortality rates in Iraq that estimated that 601,027 Iraqis had died from violence since the invasion of the country in March 2003.

The U.S. government has no official statistics on Iraqi death. On Dec. 12, 2005, President Bush estimated 30,000 Iraqis had died in the war. His aides clarified that the number did not reflect a government tally.

Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, a database often cited in media reports and one that relies on news reports in compiling numbers, says 18,656 Iraqis were killed in the last year.

Michael White, who maintains the site, said he includes deaths that appear to have been "caused, in general, by a lack of order," citing the example of 1,000 Shiite pilgrims who died when a member of the crowd shouted that a suicide bomber was in their midst.

Iraq Body Count, another independent project that also relies on news reports for its totals but only tallies civilian deaths, estimates 24,500 civilians died in 2006.

Marc Herold, a University of New Hampshire professor who consults with the IBC researchers on their methodology, said researchers struggle with matching up numbers that come from a morgue with news reports of incidents of violence.

The group stresses that it likely misses deaths in remote parts of the country.

The Associated Press tally for 2006, based on daily reports from hospitals and police, is about 13,700. The figure does not reflect a comprehensive total because reports do not come in from across the country.

Also

Bloody day: At least 65 Iraqi college students were killed and more than 170 others wounded Tuesday when two car bombs exploded nearly simultaneously at Mustansiriya University, a Shiite-dominated campus under the sway of a militia loyal to radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Gunmen also opened fire on a market in a Shiite neighborhood, killing 13 and injuring 19. Several bombs targeting police officers killed 25 people and injured 98.

U.S. military deaths: The military said four U.S. soldiers were killed Monday in the northwestern province of Ninevah, bringing total deaths of U.S. military n the Iraq war to at least 3,026.

Iraqi official flees to U.S.: The former Iraqi minister of electricity Ayham al-Samaraie, who has both U.S. and Iraqi citizenship, was home Tuesday in Chicago, a month after escaping from the Baghdad prison where he was serving a sentence on charges over $2 billion in missing funds for contracts to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure.

He said the charges were motivated by politics.

Oil-for-food case:

Benon Sevan of Cyprus, the former executive director of the U.N. oil-for-food program in Iraq, was indicted Tuesday by a Manhattan federal prosecutor for taking about $160,000 in bribes in a 1996 program that permitted Iraq to sell oil to buy food and medicine and repay billions in war reparations over its 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

Additional information from Los Angeles Times and McClatchy Newspapers