The figure comes from a study that takes into account not only those directly killed in war-related events, but also those who lost their lives due to the war's social impact.

Baghdad (AsiaNews/Agencies) - Almost half a million people lost their lives in Iraq between 2003 and 2011, this according to a recent study released in the United States. This is far higher than the figure of 115,000 deaths estimated by the Iraq Body Count, a respected British web-based site that takes into account data provided by hospitals, media, NGOs and government sources.

Carried out by US and Canadian scholars in cooperation with the Iraqi Health Ministry, the data presented in the new study includes not only those who died directly from warfare, including terrorist attacks, but also those who died from the war's social impact, such as degraded hygienic condition.

In a perspective article accompanying the study, Salman Rawaf, director of the World Health Organisation Collaborating Centre at Imperial College London, warned however that the "estimate carries substantial uncertainty".

Published by PLoS Medicine, the study was based on research conducted among the residents in 2,000 locations in 20 Iraqi regions. Respondents were asked questions about the circumstances in which people around them died.

Countrywide projections based on these figures suggest that 461,000 Iraqis died between March 2003 and mid-2011 from politically induced violence and its aftermath.

About 70 per cent of the deaths were caused by combat, attacks and murders with the remaining 30 per cent were due to indirect factors resulting from the conflict.

In 35 per cent of the cases, respondents attributed the death to coalition forces, in 32 per cent of the cases, to militant groups.

When violence was not the direct cause, deaths were blamed on a health care system ravaged by war.

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