"Unknown perpetrators" killed bulk of 90,000 Iraqi civilians during 2003 to 2008: study

Baghdad, Feb.16 (ANI): A study has claimed that nearly 90, 000 people have been killed over five years from March 2003 to 2008 during the Iraq war, and majority of these were by unknown perpetrators.

The coalition forces accounted for 12 per cent and Iraqi forces for 11 per cent of deaths, the new analysis has suggested.

The study by King's College London, published in PLoS Medicine, provides the detailed assessment of civilian deaths due to the conflict.

Madelyn Hsiao-Rei Hicks and colleagues analyzed the Iraq Body Count data that collates media reports of deaths of individual Iraqi civilians and cross-checks these reports with data from hospitals, morgues, non-governmental organisations and official figures.

The authors found that "unknown perpetrators", primarily through extra-judicial executions, inflicted most Iraqi civilian violent deaths during, March 20, 2003, and March 19, 2008.

These perpetrators used weapons that had highly lethal and indiscriminate effects on Iraqi civilians, that included suicide bombs and vehicle bombs.

Deaths caused by Coalition forces of Iraqi civilians, women and children, and of Iraqi civilians from air attacks, were at its peak during the invasion in 2003. (ANI)