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At least 8,000 Iraqi soldiers dead

While the number of US troops killed in Iraq since the 2003 invasion stands at 4,000, up to three times as many Iraqi soldiers have died -- and the number of civilians killed runs into tens and probably hundreds of thousands.

The Icasualties.org Web site, which bases its death toll on published reports, says that around 8,000 members of the Iraqi security forces have died since the invasion. Last year, however, the Iraqi government put the figure at 12,000.

There is no agreement when it comes to civilian casualties, particularly as many deaths are never reported in the media.

In January, a joint study by the UN, the WHO and the Iraqi government concluded that between 104,000 and 223,000 Iraqis had died violently since the US-led invasion of March 2003.

As of March 24, the independent Iraq Body Count Web site, based solely on incidents reported by the media, spoke of close to 90,000 deaths, of whom more than a quarter -- 24,000 -- died last year.

At the high end of the scale, last September, a British polling institute estimated the total number of civilian deaths at 1.2 million, a figure coherent with an earlier report in the Lancet, a respected medical review.

As of July 2006, a statistical survey quoted in the Lancet found that 655,000 more civilians had died than would have been the case if there had been no war.

Among civilians who have died are those who have been accidentally killed in raids and air strikes by US-led forces while targeting insurgents.

The UN says 123 civilian deaths were reported as a result of air strikes in the six-month period between July 1 and Dec. 31 last year.

Such deaths were recently condemned by the hardline group of Sunni clerics known as the Muslim Scholars' Association as "crimes committed by the occupier which continue day after day."

Icasualties.org says 308 soldiers from other countries who have formed part of the US-led coalition have been killed in Iraq since the invasion.

Among countries that still have forces in Iraq, the death tolls as of March 24 were: Britain -- 175; Poland -- 23; Ukraine -- 18; Bulgaria -- 13; Denmark -- eight.

For countries which took part in earlier stages of the occupation, but have now withdrawn their forces, the most losses were suffered by Italy (33) and Spain (11).

The figure does not include deaths among the many thousands of mercenaries, termed private military contractors by the US. Estimates of their death toll, as of last year, ranged from 140 to more than 900.

Although it refused to take part of the US-led invasion, Turkey has mounted several military operations against Turkish Kurd guerrillas in northern Iraq. After a major operation last month it said it had lost 27 soldiers and killed at least 240 Kurds.
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