Iraq Body Count (IBC) is an analytical project, not a news portal. Our procedure is to collect and reconcile every available, distinct report about each incident. For larger events, stories may run into the dozens and continue to emerge for days or weeks. This, and the inexorable rise in daily violent incidents, means that there is a considerable gap between the initial reporting of events and their first appearance in the IBC database.

However, we obtain an early impression of events within about 48 hours of first reports. This page provides our news gatherer's account of such recent events, but please keep in mind that these are not our final database entries. Rather, they should be considered an early update on civilian casualties.