True number of Iraqi dead may never be known

THE total number of Iraqis killed in the war may never be known, US officials admitted yesterday.

Relentless British and US bombardments with hi-tech munitions have probably left thousands of victims burnt beyond recognition or buried in rubble, military analysts believe.

“In the bombing of the different divisions throughout the country, the destruction was terrifying,” an American official told the New York Times.

“Whole divisions were destroyed. Many went home, but many were killed. It won’t be until after the war that we get a better accounting, if then,” he said.

Estimating the dead is especially hard in this war because few Iraqi military units fought in organised formations. Distinguishing between civilian and military casualties is also problematic as many soldiers were not in uniform.

“We don’t know the exact number who stood and fought. There really wasn’t much in the way of conventional battles,” said Mark Burgess, of the Centre for Defence Information in Washington.

Britain and the US will not provide even rough estimates of total Iraqi casualties.

Capt Frank Thorp at the US Central Command in Doha said it would be wrong to look at combat as a scorecard.

“The commander on the ground is focused on the present, the future and how his troops are doing. We are not going to ask him to make specific reports on enemy casualties,” he said.

“Remaining on the battlefield to count the enemy dead was too time-consuming and, frankly, too risky,” he said.

The figures that are available are often very vague, with ambulance drivers and hospital workers in Basra estimating they have handled between 1,000 and 2,000 corpses since the conflict started.

There is also no Iraqi authority left to count the casualties or to notify the families of the dead.

An anti-war group, the Iraqi Body Count, gives a daily estimate of civilian casualties taken from Arab and Western media reports. The current tally stands at between 1,138 and 1,374.