BAGHDAD,
March 11, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Only days
before the second anniversary of the US-led invasion of Iraq, a group
of top public-health physicians hit out at the United States and
Britain for failing to set an exact record of Iraqi casualties,
calling for setting up an independent inquiry into the death toll in
the occupied country.
“We
believe that the joint US/UK failure to make any effort to monitor
Iraqi casualties is ... wholly irresponsible,” the physicians said
in a statement published online by the British Medical Journal, Reuters
reported Friday, March 11.
The
statement, signed by a cohort of 23 leading specialists from the
United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and Spain, stressed that
setting an exact count of the Iraqi casualties since the US
invasion-turned-occupation of the Arab country in March 2003 would
help provide a better understanding of the causes of deaths.
“Counting
casualties can help save lives both now and in the future,” the
statement said, adding that understanding the causes of death is a
core public-health responsibility, nationally and internationally.
Over
100,000 Iraqi civilians -- half of whom women and children -- have
lost their lives since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003,
according to a study published by the British medical Lancet.
Inquiry
While
calling for an immediate independent inquiry into Iraqi casualties
since the US-led invasion-turned-occupation, the physicians said
relying on data from the Iraqi Ministry of Health was unacceptable
because the Iraqi sources were likely seriously to underestimate the
number of casualties for several reasons.
“Everybody
who works in this field knows you don’t rely on data from hospital
mortuaries because it is massively low,” Professor Klim McPherson, a
public health epidemiologist at Oxford University told Reuters.
The
Iraqi Health Ministry sets the number of Iraqi casualties from July 1,
2004 to January 1, 2005 at 3,274 civilians. The Health Ministry
figures do not include deaths during the first 12 months after the
invasion.
Other
estimates on Iraqi casualties, however, vary widely.
Iraq
Body Count, which is run by academics and peace activists and based on
reports from at least two media sources, estimate between 16,231 and
18,509 Iraqis have died since the US invasion of the oil-rich country.
Bloodshed
As
a case in point on the high number of casualties in the war-torn
country, at least 50 people were killed and 90 others injured Thursday
in a bombing attack on a Shiite funeral in the northern Iraqi city of
Mosul, Iraqi health officials said.
“Many
people were killed or wounded when a suicide bomber blew himself up in
the hall where the funeral service was being held,” one witness was
quoted by the BBC News Online as saying.
The
attacker struck as mourners flocked into a hall next to the Sadreen
mosque, where a service was being held for Hisham al-Araji, the Mosul
representative for firebrand Shiite leader Muqtada Sadr.
Alarming
Figures
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Iraqi children have taken the brunt of the deteriorating security conditions in Iraq. (Reuters)
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McPherson
stressed that estimates of 100,000 civilians killed since the US war
on Iraq was alarming, stressing that there is no reason to believe
that these estimates should be biased.
“Apart
from the practical arguments, the principled ones stand and will
stand. Have we not learned any lessons from history of sweeping
alarming numbers of deaths under the carpet?” he stressed.
However,
a spokesman from Britain's Foreign Office claimed that it was not an
easy talk to do more accurate research in the current deteriorating
security conditions in the occupied country.
“We
continue to feel that the Iraqi Ministry of Health figures are the
best available in an uncertain situation, being based on actual
headcount instead of extrapolation,” the spokesman said.
Forty-seven
influential figures, including a number of former British ambassadors
and bishops, urged British Prime Minister Tony Blair in a letter made
public last December to agree to setting an inquiry on the Iraqi death
toll since the US war on Iraq. But such calls were rebuffed by the
British Premier.
