Around 162,000 people, almost 80 percent of them civilians, were killed in Iraq from the start of the 2003 US-led invasion up to last year’s withdrawal of American forces, a British NGO said on Monday. Iraq Body Count (IBC) warned that, contrary to apparent trends in figures released by the Iraqi government, the level of violence has changed little from mid-2009, though attacks are markedly down from when the country was in the throes of sectarian war in 2006 and 2007. In all, the non-governmental organisation said an estimated 162,000 people were killed in Iraq in the nearly nine years of conflict. It said around 79 percent of the fatalities were civilians, while the remainder included US soldiers, Iraqi security forces, and insurgents. “The violence peaked in late 2006 but was sustained at high levels until the second half of 2008 — nearly 90 percent of the deaths occurred by 2009,” IBC said in a statement. But it warned that “there has now been no noticeable downward trend (in civilian deaths) since mid-2009.”
