Suicide Bombs in Iraq Have Killed 12,000 Civilians, Study Says

BAGHDAD — While sophisticated roadside bombs have taken a heavy toll on American troops over the course of the war here, suicide bombings have largely been a hallmark of sectarian warfare. Independent researchers have now tried to quantify their damage, poring through data compiled from death reports to conclude that more than 12,000 Iraqis have been killed in at least 1,000 suicide attacks since the American-led invasion.

The paper is part of a series by the London-based medical journal The Lancet on the health consequences of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, which set off wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in which suicide bombings have become common, as they have in Pakistan.

The Lancet published studies in 2004 and 2006 that used samplings of casualties and statistical modeling to arrive at tolls of “excess” deaths (those that would not have happened without the war), which critics said were far too high. The paper released on Friday, however, relied on direct counts of deaths using information compiled by Iraq Body Count, an independent group that culls news reports and hospital and morgue records to try to keep track of civilian deaths.

Iraq’s ability to track the deaths is limited, and its record-keeping remains poor. The medical establishment is so diminished — many educated Iraqis have fled over the years — that the wounded are not always treated at a hospital, and the dead are quickly buried.

According to the paper, from March 20, 2003, to the end of 2010, suicide bombers killed 12,284 Iraqi civilians and wounded 30,644 others. The attacks killed 200 coalition troops, including 175 from the United States.

The report said suicide attacks accounted for about 10 percent of all armed conflict deaths among civilians and a quarter of all such injuries. Those percentages were based on an overall armed conflict death toll of 108,624, according to the Iraq Body Count data. Suicide attackers were not counted among the dead unless the attacker was a child.

The researchers could obtain demographic information on only about a fourth of the suicide attacks. That data showed that men accounted for three-fourths of the dead and children were killed in about 16 percent of the attacks. Child victims were much more likely to die than adult victims.

The paper’s primary author, Dr. Madelyn Hsiao-Rei Hicks of King’s College London, said the numbers of dead and wounded were probably higher than the published reports and records reflected.

“Suicide bomb injuries are horrific injuries; they are not like gunshot wounds, which are usually clean depending on where you are hit,” Dr. Hicks said.

“The injuries from suicide bombers are really severe,” she said. “You have multiple fragments from the explosion, and people tend to have small pieces of metal and wood inside of them, and all of them have to be removed.”

Lack of proper treatment results in limb loss or other disabilities for many civilians wounded in suicide attacks, she said.

“The medical treatments Iraqis have available to them are so limited that if they are injured it increases their chances of dying,” Dr. Hicks said. “Let’s say you had a child injured in a suicide attack and perhaps their leg was blown off and prosthesis is needed. The child will need a new one every six months or so because they are growing.”

Violence, particularly suicide attacks, is on the rise across Iraq. According to numbers released by the Ministry of Interior, 278 people died across Iraq in August compared with 178 in July.

More than 90 Iraqis were killed and more than 300 wounded on Aug. 15 in apparently coordinated attacks that included suicide bombings. On Sunday, more than 30 were killed in a suicide attack at a mosque in Baghdad.
NYT