Pentagon: 26,000 Iraqi casualties

Star-Telegram.com | 10/29/2005 | Pentagon: 26,000 Iraqi casualties: "Sat, Oct. 29, 2005
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Pentagon: 26,000 Iraqi casualties

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - In a rare look at how the Defense Department tracks non-U.S. casualties in the war in Iraq, the Pentagon is estimating that 26,000 Iraqis have been killed or wounded by insurgents since Jan. 1, 2004.

The Pentagon, in response to questions from congressional staffers, provided daily casualty estimates _ those killed and wounded _ over six time periods, the most recent period ending Sept. 16 of this year. Applying those daily estimates to the number of days in each period results in nearly 26,000, a total not included in the Pentagon report to Congress.

In the most recent period, from Aug. 29 to Sept. 16, an estimated 64 Iraqis became casualties each day, the report indicated. The rate increased in four of the last five periods.

'It's a kind of a snapshot,' Pentagon spokesman Greg Hicks said Saturday. 'The Defense Department doesn't maintain a comprehensive or authoritative count of Iraqi casualties.'

The Pentagon provided the estimates in a bar graph in a 44-page security and stability report to Congress on Oct. 13, its second quarterly report, mandated by lawmakers.

Hicks said the estimates were gathered from initial incident reports by subordinate units of coalition forces and are not meant to be taken as comprehensive.

The graph indicated that the average daily casualty rates for Iraqis since January 2004 were approximately:

26: Jan. 1-March 31, 2004.
30: April 1-June 28, 2004.
40: June 29-Nov. 26, 2004.
51: Nov. 27, 2004-Feb. 11, 2005.
49: Feb. 12-Aug. 28, 2005.
64: Aug. 29-Sept. 16, 2005.

A recent Associated Press count found that at least 3,870 Iraqis have died in the last six months. A U.S. military spokesman told the AP last week that as many as 30,000 Iraqis may have died during the war, which began with the U.S. invasion in March 2003.

The AP count found that two-thirds of those killed were civilians and one-third were security personnel.

More than 2,000 U.S. military personnel serving in Iraq have died since the war began."