国际英语新闻：U.S. military report says 77,000 Iraqis killed in more than 4 years

BAGHDAD, Oct. 16 (Xinhua) -- The U.S. military released a new tally showing that nearly 77,000 Iraqis were killed from early 2004 to mid 2008, falling well below the figures of the Iraqi government and some international organizations, an Iraqi newspaper said on Saturday.

The period of the military data includes the sectarian violence which was the most bloody chapter during the years of the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, the al-Mashriq daily said, quoting a data released by the U.S. Army.

The statistics showed that 76,939 Iraqi from security forces and civilians were killed and 121,649 wounded between January 2004 and August 2008.

It also said that 3,952 U.S. soldiers and other allies from the Multi-National forces were killed during the same period, while 30, 068 others were wounded.

There have been no accurate statistics about the casualties among Iraqi civilians, but last October figures compiled by the Iraqi Human Rights Ministry said that 85,694 civilians and Iraqi security members were killed from the beginning of 2004 to Oct. 31, 2008, and 147,195 were wounded.

While a tally by the Iraq Body Count, a private, British-based group said that the estimated number of civilian casualties is between 98,252 and 107,235 for the period since the beginning of the war to September 19, 2010. The group's figures only depend on the media reports about daily incidents.

However, several survey-based attempts to roughly estimate the number of Iraqis killed as a result of the 2003 invasion and subsequent conflict showed much higher tallies, such as a survey published by Lancet, the British medical journal, in October 2006, which found that 601,000 had been killed by violence since the beginning of the war till 2006.