AERIAL bomb attacks that kill civilians in Iraq are as lethal as suicide bombers on foot.

Madelyn Hicks of Kings College London and colleagues analysed 60,481 deaths between March 2003 and March 2008 from the Iraq Body Count (IBC), a project that records violent civilian deaths.

Suicide bombers on foot killed nearly seven times as many civilians as aerial bomb attacks (without ground fire). However, where an aerial bombing did kill civilians the number of deaths was comparable (The New England Journal of Medicine, vol 360, p 1585).

While no one is suggesting the US and its …