UPDATE: an academic who has worked with the data has pointed out some of its limitations - you can read his take here

Data journalism works best when there's a lot of data to work with. Wikileaks' Iraq war logs release has dumped some 391,000 records of the Iraq war into the public arena. We've had them for a few weeks - what have we found out?

This is in a different league to the Wikileaks Afghanistan leak - there's a good case for saying the new release has made the war the most documented in history. Every minor detail is now there for us to analyse and breakdown but one factor stands out: the sheer volume of deaths, most of which are civilians.

Some key findings:

Total deaths

• The database records 109,032 deaths in total for the period

• The database records the following death counts: 66,081 civilians, 23,984 insurgents and 15,196 Iraqi security forces

• The worst place for deaths was Baghdad - 45,497, followed by MND north (which is the region that goes from Baghdad up to Kurdistan) where another 34,210 died. The quietest place was the north east with only 328 deaths

Murders and escalation of force

• 34,814 people were recorded as murdered in 24,840 incidents

• The worst month was December 2006 with 2,566 murders - and 2006 was the worst year with 16,870 murders

• The database records 12,578 escalation of force incidents (where someone is shot driving too fast at a checkpoint, for instance) - and these resulted in 778 recorded deaths

Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs)

• There were 65,439 IED explosions over the period - with 31,780 deaths recorded on the database from those alone.

• There were another 44,620 IEDs found and cleared

• The worst month for IED explosions was May 2007 with 2,080 IED explosions

The Guardian has decided not to republish the entire database, largely because we can't be sure the summary field doesn't contain confidential details of informants and so on. But, so you have some data to work with, we have provided this spreadsheet. It contains the records of every incident where someone dies, nearly 60,000 in all. We have removed the summary field so it's just the basic data: the military heading, numbers of deaths and the geographic breakdown.

Google Fusion tables is fantastic for mapping out bulky datasets and they don't come much bulkier than this. We took all these incidents where someone had died and put it on the map above. The fullscreen version (see top of page) is easier to use. A few of the datapoints aren't mapping correctly - but this may be a problem with the data.

You can download it below, plus we've broken down the deaths by cause and year in sortable tables. What can you do with it?

Data summary

Deaths and wounded Click heading to sort YEAR Coalition forces Iraqi forces Civilians Enemy TOTAL DEATHS TOTAL WOUNDED, all categories 2004 747 1,031 2,781 5,995 10,554 18,567 2005 856 2,256 5,746 3,594 12,452 24,850 2006 821 4,370 25,178 4,657 35,026 41,164 2007 919 4,718 23,333 6,793 35,763 55,804 2008 282 1,948 6,362 2,635 11,227 23,632 2009 146 873 2,681 310 4,010 12,365 TOTAL 3,771 15,196 66,081 23,984 109,032 176,382

Causes of death Click heading to sort Category Coalition forces Iraqi forces Civilians Insurgents Accident 428 256 599 22 Ambush 4 93 85 154 Arrest 0 12 20 56 Arson 0 6 114 6 ARTY 0 0 2 41 Assassination 0 183 246 7 Attack 86 1,167 1,627 3,775 Attack Threat 0 0 1 1 Blue-Blue 9 2 3 4 Blue-Green 0 51 4 0 Blue-White 0 0 62 1 Border Ops 0 0 0 2 Breaching 0 0 1 0 Cache Found/Cleared 2 10 28 236 Carjacking 0 5 27 5 Close Air Support 0 0 5 776 Confiscation 0 0 3 57 Cordon/Search 2 43 47 316 Counter Mortar Fire 0 0 0 24 Deliberate Attack 0 3 0 119 Demonstration 1 16 476 2 Detain 0 2 19 87 Direct Fire 482 4,270 4,766 6,807 Direct Fire Threat 0 0 1 0 Elicitation 0 1 0 0 Equipment Failure 4 2 3 0 Escalation of Force 0 22 686 70 Explosive Remnants of War (ERW)/Turn In 0 0 1 0 Green-Blue 5 14 3 0 Green-Green 0 58 17 2 Green-White 0 2 48 0 IED Explosion 2,107 5,990 20,228 3,455 IED False 0 0 3 0 IED Found/Cleared 6 31 90 579 IED Hoax 1 0 2 1 IED Pre-detonation 0 0 3 50 IED Suspected 0 0 0 37 IED Threat 0 0 0 2 Indirect Fire 192 284 2,087 1,040 Indirect Fire Threat 0 0 0 2 Intimidation Threat 0 6 18 1 Kidnapping 0 67 161 18 Kidnapping Threat 0 0 2 0 Looting 0 0 18 3 Medevac 3 1 5 2 Mine Found/Cleared 0 0 2 1 Mine Strike 37 24 30 6 Movement to Contact 1 0 0 77 Murder 9 2,169 32,563 73 Murder Threat 0 0 1 0 Other 194 72 584 437 Other Defensive 2 5 141 116 Other offensive 0 4 18 639 Patrol 0 3 43 61 Police Actions 0 1 14 32 Raid 12 75 86 619 Recon 0 0 0 13 Sabotage 0 2 6 0 SAFIRE 67 4 22 317 SAFIRE Threat 0 0 1 0 Search and Attack 0 0 0 90 Shooting 0 1 8 0 Small Unit Actions 27 13 65 3,129 Smuggling 0 1 5 2 Sniper Ops 86 173 62 364 Staff Estimate 0 2 380 0 Surveillance 0 1 8 61 TCP 0 0 5 25 Theft 0 8 57 14 Tribal Feud 0 14 138 5 UAV 0 0 3 49 Unexploded Ordnance 0 2 15 3 Unknown Explosion 4 24 284 61 Vehicle Interdiction 0 0 4 29 White-Blue 0 0 5 0 White-Green 0 0 0 1 White-White 0 0 20 0 Not known 0 1 0 0 TOTAL 3,771 15,196 66,081 23,984



• DATA: download details of every death in Iraq (Google Fusion tables, requires Google login)

• DATA: download the full sheet (no login)

• DATA: download our analysis spreadsheet

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