The Latest Iraq Body Count

Nick Gillespie | January 16, 2007

At least 34,452 Iraqi civilians were killed in violence in the country in 2006, the United Nations said in a report. A further 36,685 people were injured.

That's from a Bloomberg News story which continued:

"The root causes of the sectarian violence lie in revenge killings,'' the UN said today in an e-mailed statement detailing the report's findings.

Sectarian attacks are causing the migration of Iraq's professional class, the UN said, while the "basic rights and freedoms'' of women and other minorities are "profoundly affected by violence and action by insurgents, militias and criminal gangs.''

Whole thing here.

Back in 2002, former Reasoner Matt Welch checked out an earlier U.N. study on the effects of economic sanctions against Iraq and found claims about the number of dead children to extremely unreliable. Read "The Politics of Dead Children" here.

Go here for a report on the continuing controversies over the number of death in the Gulf War.