Collateral damage in Iraq: 22-55k killed

Medact, a British-based humanitarian group, has issued a report entitled "Continuing Collateral Damage: The health and environmental costs of war on Iraq." According to the Guardian, the report found that 22,000 to 55,000 people have been killed by the war thus far, including up to 9,565 civilians.

Furthermore,

disruption to the country's health was...considerable, says the report's author, Dr Sabya Farooq, pointing to dangers such as leftover explosives and ammunition - Unicef has said this has hurt more than 1,000 children - landmines, and risks of cancers from toxic dust from weapons with depleted uranium.

"The mental and physical health of already weakened and unhealthy people is being damaged further," the report says. "Shortages of clean water, adequate food and power leads to an increase in diseases that is likely to result in more deaths than those directly caused by the conflict."

It adds: "The absence of reliable data, the failure of occupying forces to provide full information, and the deteriorated security situation which caused most UN staff and many non-government organisations to leave have led to an information black hole of unique proportions."

You might recall that Medact issued a report prior to the war that warned that between 49,000 and 261,000 people might die because of the impending conflict.