Cost of the Iraq War in human lives: 461,000 killed between March 2003 and June 2011

Study claims to show true, shocking cost of the conflict in Iraqi deaths



Researchers surveyed 2,000 households to make their casualty estimate



Editors of the study issue chilling warning that war is 'far from over'

Almost half a million Iraqis have died as a result of the conflict in their country, shock new figures have revealed.



According to a study of the war-torn nation, an estimated 461,000 natives have been killed between March 2003 and June 2011 as a direct or indirect result of the fighting.

The research, published in the PLOS Medicine journal, concludes with grave warning that the war in Iraq is 'far from over' and continues to claim lives at an 'alarming rate'.



Traumatic memories: Householders in Iraq were asked to recall how many family members they had lost and how their loved ones died. In this picture, from 2006, an Iraqi 13 year-old-boy's coffin is carried by relatives

Shocking: The figures were edited with a note from researchers who said that the war in Iraq was 'far from over'. In this picture, from 2006, men mourn over the coffin of a victim of bombings in the holy city of Najaf

Most of the fatalities in the grim total are attributable to violence, the study said.

But around a third were the result of indirect war-related events such as failures in health care systems and collapses in the crucial supply of networks and sanitation.

Gunshots were the cause of 62 per cent of violent deaths, with car bombs and other explosions accounting for 12 per cent and 9 per cent, respectively.



Heart conditions are the leading cause of non-violent deaths in the country.



The figures were drawn up by a team of researchers from Iraq and the US, led by Amy Hagopian, of the University of Washington, after a survey of 2,000 households in Iraq between May and July 2011.

Every household head was asked about births and deaths since 2001 and all household adults were also asked about mortality among their siblings.

Leaders: Tony Blair, (left), former Prime Minister and former USA President George Bush sanctioned the Iraq invasion to bring down Saddam Hussein's regime

The study calculated that there was a more than 50 per cent higher crude death rate in the period between March 1, 2003 and June 30, 2011 than in the 26-months which preceded the war.

The researchers that say that is a total in 405,000 'excess' which can be attributed to conflict.



A further 56,000 deaths were missed, the study estimated, as a result of migration out of the country.



British troops joined the US invasion of Iraq to overthrow Saddam Hussein in March 2003.



The British forces lost 179 servicemen and women in the conflict whereas the American's death toll reached 4,448 during their eight year operation.



Combat operations by UK troops ended in 2009 with the US ending combat operations the following year.

The editors' summary of the report said the Iraqi death toll figures represented the most up-to-date estimates available from the middle eastern nation.



But it said the estimates could still be associated with 'substantial difficulties' because there was such a small representative sample of households.

Researchers also had to draw numbers based on recollections from respondents of incidents which could have happened up to a decade earlier.



Military deaths: Two-thirds of the death toll were military related. Here, US soldiers remove the body of a victim after a suicide bomber attack in Ramadi in 2006

Cost of war: The report concluded that there has been 405,000 'excess' deaths as a result of the war, meaning that is the number of people who may have lived had the conflict never happened

The researchers also had to rely on outdated census figures for their overall population figures.



In a summary, the report said that they were 95 per cent sure that the actual death toll lies between 48,000 and 751,000.'



I continued: 'More than two years past the end of the period covered in this study, the conflict in Iraq is far from over and continues to cost lives at alarming rates.;

The estimate is the first to be issued since 2006.



Then, claims that 655,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the conflict were described as 'nowhere near accurate' by the then Labour Government.