'655,000 Iraqi civilians killed'

Such a figure would mean that 2.5 per cent of the Iraqi population has died because of the invasion and ensuing strife.

Researchers used household interviews rather than body counts to estimate how many more Iraqis had died because of the war than used to die annually in peacetime.

"We estimate that as a consequence of the coalition invasion of 18 March , 2003, about 655,000 Iraqis have died above the number that would be expected in a non-conflict situation," said Gilbert Burnham of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the United States.

George Bush, the US president, dismissed the report. "The methodology is pretty well discredited," he said at a White House news conference.

However, Mr Bush conceded: "I do know that a lot of innocent people have died, and that troubles me, and it grieves me. And I applaud the Iraqis for their courage in the face of violence."

Ali al-Dabbagh, a spokesman for the Iraqi government, said: "The report is unbelievable. These numbers are exaggerated and are not precise."

Iraqi government officials put the total Iraqi death toll since the war started in March 2003 at 40,000.

The team's study, published by the medical journal the Lancet, estimated pre-war deaths in Iraq at 143,000 a year, and said Iraq's death rate is now 2.5 times that of the pre-war period.

"The combination of a long duration and tens of millions of people affected has made this the deadliest international conflict of the 21st century," Mr Burnham said.

The survey was a follow-up to an earlier study, which showed that nearly 100,000 more people than normal died in Iraq between March 2003 and September 2004.

The number of extra Iraqis who have died since March 2003 includes deaths from all causes, including those due to a rise in certain diseases and illnesses, the study said.

Nearly 60 per cent of the dead were boys and men aged between 15 and 44. "Over the 40 month-period of the study, approximately 31 per cent of households attributed the death of their household member to coalition forces," Mr Burnham said.

"Of the deaths, we found an increasing proportion were due to car bombs, but the majority were due to gunfire," he said.

Although the study is released ahead of November mid-term elections in the US, Mr Burnham said it was not politically motivated.

The figures are based on a survey conducted by researchers from Johns Hopkins and al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad between May and June of 1,849 households including 12,801 household members in 47 randomly selected sites across Iraq.

They questioned the inhabitants about births, deaths, and migrations.

Other estimates based on think tank figures and media sources calculate the number of extra Iraqi deaths to be much lower. The Iraq Body Count Database says between 43,850 and 48,693 civilians have died since the invasion.

"Our total estimate is much higher than other mortality estimates because we used a population-based, active method for collecting mortality information rather than passive methods that depend on counting bodies or tabulated media reports of violent deaths," Mr Burnham said.

Just one more day of slaughter

WHATEVER the doubts cast by George Bush on the numbers of civilian dead, the reported daily litany of killings, explosions and bodies discovered speaks for itself.

Yesterday, the corpses of seven people were turned in to the morgue in the southern city of al-Kut, including at least three apparent victims of sectarian death squads that were fished out of the Tigris in Suwayrah, 25 miles south of Baghdad, where bodies dumped in the capital often surface. They were shot, and had their hands bound.

Five people were killed in three separate car bombings in Baghdad, while gunmen also shot and killed a policeman in the capital. Another policeman was shot and killed in the northern city of Kirkuk, while a civilian died in a roadside bombing on a highway in the north.

Government offices and schools were nearly empty in Baquba, 35 miles north-east of Baghdad, with people staying away after leaflets signed by a previously unknown insurgent group, Mujahdeen of Diyala, warned of retaliatory attacks on government offices if a local army commander was not relieved of duty.

Abu Khalid, who works in the Baquba municipal offices, said he stayed home out of fear. "The situation is dangerous and the insurgents' statement looks serious," he said. "We cannot risk our lives."

The Islamic Army in Iraq, a nationalist anti-occupation group, claimed responsibility for a night attack on the US Forward Operating Base Falcon in southern Baghdad near the Dora neighbourhood. The explosions on the base damaged nearby homes, but there were no casualties in the neighbourhood, police captain Furat Gaiti said.