University researchers from the US, Canada and Iraq based their estimate on randomised surveys of 2,000 households.

 

The toll¹ includes not only violent deaths from the invasion and subsequent insurgency², but avoidable fatalities³ linked to infrastructure⁴ collapse⁵.

 

It exceeds the 112,000 violent civilian⁶ deaths reported by Iraq Body Count.

 

The British-based organisation⁷ bases its tally⁸ on media reports, hospital and mortuary records, and information from official and non-governmental sources.

 

There has been a surge in sectarian（宗派的） violence in Iraq in the past year, with almost 5,000 civilians⁹ killed in attacks between January and September, according the UN. It says more than 3,000 people died in 2012.

 

 

The study - by researchers from the University of Washington, Johns Hopkins University, Simon Fraser University and Mustansiriya University - covers March 2003 until June 2011, six months before the US withdrawal¹⁰.

 

For it, interviewers surveyed 2,000 randomly¹¹ selected households in 100 geographical¹² clusters across Iraq's 18 provinces between May 2011 and July 2011. Each was asked about deaths among household members and siblings¹³ from 2001, when Iraq's infrastructure was already degrading because of international sanctions, to the time of the interview.

 

From that, the researchers found the "wartime crude death rate" was 4.55 per 1,000 people, more than 50% higher than before the invasion. 

 

By multiplying those rates by the annual Iraq population, the researchers estimated that the "total excess deaths attributable to the war" up until mid-2011 to be about 405,000.

 

They also estimated that an additional 56,000 deaths were not counted because of the emigration of households from Iraq.

 

The study concludes that more than 60% of the estimated 461,000 excess deaths were directly attributable to violence, with the rest associated with the collapse of infrastructure and other indirect causes. These include the failures of health, sanitation¹⁴（环境卫生）, transportation, communication and other systems.

 

The most common causes of non-violent deaths linked to the war were heart attacks or cardiovascular（心血管的） conditions, followed by infant or childhood deaths other than injuries, chronic¹⁵ illnesses and cancer.

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