This is the latest from AP:
Around 770 Die in Recent Iraq Fighting
By HAMZA HENDAWI
The Associated Press
Monday, April 12, 2004; 9:13 AM
BAGHDAD, Iraq - About 70 U.S.-led coalition troops and 700 Iraqi insurgents have been killed in fighting across Iraq since April 1, but there is no authoritative figure on Iraqi civilian deaths, U.S. Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said Monday.
The head of Fallujah's hospital said a day earlier that 600 Iraqis - mostly civilians - were killed in the siege of that city alone.
By an Associated Press count, at least 62 U.S. troops, two non-U.S. coalition soldiers and around 882 Iraqis have been killed across the country since April 4, including in Fallujah.
Hospital director Rafie al-Issawi said most of the 600 dead in Fallujah were women, children and elderly. But he refused to give their exact numbers, saying that doing so would suggest that the remaining dead - young, military-aged men - were all insurgents, which he said was not the case.
Al-Issawi told AP that the number was compiled from registries of bodies received by the Fallujah General Hospital and four main clinics. The registries had names or - in unidentified cases - the gender and description of the bodies, he said.
Kimmitt's comments Monday were the first full casualty statistics released by the military since a bloody uprising by a radical Shiite militia started April 4 and U.S. forces began their siege against Sunni insurgents in Fallujah early April 5.
"The coalition casualties since April 1 run about 70 personnel. ... The casualty figures we have received from the enemy are somewhere about 10 times that amount, what we've inflicted on the enemy," Kimmitt told a news conference.
"In terms of civilian casualties, there is no reliable, authoritative figure out there. We would ask the Ministry of Health, once Iraqi control ... is allowed back in Fallujah, they can get a fair, honest and credible figure and not one that is somehow filtered through some of the local propaganda machines," he said.
Iraqi national security adviser Mouwakaq al-Rubaie said the Health Ministry has no firm numbers of Iraqi dead from Fallujah.
The AP count of coalition military deaths is based on a compilation of individual statements issued by the military.
The count of about 880 Iraqis killed around the country is based on statements on individual incidents by the U.S. military, Iraqi police and hospital officials.
Besides casualties in Fallujah, that toll includes an unknown number of Iraqi insurgents and militiamen, members of Iraqi security forces and civilians killed in fights between gunmen and coalition soldiers in various parts of the country.
Bodies were being buried in two soccer fields in Fallujah. At one of the fields, visited by an AP reporter, freshly dug graves covered a large area, some with headstones indicating they were children or bearing women's names. A gravedigger at the city said more than 300 bodies had been buried there. The number at the second field was unknown.
---
AP correspondent Abdul-Qader Saadi contributed to this report from Fallujah.
© 2004 The Associated Press |
