25,000 people killed in Iraq since war

Nearly 25,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed and 45,000 have been injured in Iraq since the start of the war in March 2003, according to a new report.

An estimated 24,865 civilians died from airstrikes, bombings and criminal activity in the country, most of them in the weeks following the start of the war, research from trans-Atlantic group Iraq Body Count and the Oxford Research Group finds.

Nearly 40 per cent of the deaths were caused by coalition forces, the report says. Nine per cent were due to insurgents targeting coalition forces and another 11 per cent were down to attacks not directly aimed at foreign forces or official Iraqi targets.

One of the report’s authors, Professor John Sloboda, said on average 34 Iraqis had died because of violence every single day since the invasion.