The month of June is over, and unsurprisingly has wound up not only the deadliest of the year for Iraq, which is rapidly flying apart at the seems, but is indeed the deadliest month there in many, many years.

The Antiwar.com figures show 5,456 killed, including 3,627 militants, and 2,553 wounded, including 93 militants. The low militant wounded figure is because militants wounded are not widely reported, and so it is a dramatic under count.

That’s up from 2,249 killed in May, which was itself the worst toll of the year. The UN figure for May was 799, but they deliberately excluded Anbar Province, which was where most of the fighting was.

Methodology (from Margaret Griffis)



The U.N. has been reluctant to give a full account of the deaths in Iraq, due to the inability to confirm many of the reported deaths. For several months, they’ve avoided publishing any figures from occupied Anbar province, for example, even confirmed civilian deaths.

Many of the reports, particularly those from the Iraqi government need to be taken with a grain of salt. First, they appear to be undercounting military deaths. If they are to be believed, then several ground clashes resulted in the deaths of dozens of militants but not one soldier or policeman. It is also impossible to tell if they are overcounting militant deaths. Some of the tallies of militant deaths in airstrikes deep within occupied territory seem completely made up.

Antiwar.com has ignored some of the most outlandish reports, while still trying to make sense of what is obviously a very deadly situation. Any estimates made by anyone, even authorities in Iraq, are going to simply be estimates.