DISINFO: The US military intervention in Iraq in 2003 killed millions of Iraqi civilians
SUMMARY
The US military intervention in Iraq in 2003 killed millions of Iraqi civilians.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narratives that exaggerate the number of civilian casualties of US-led or NATO military interventions claiming that such interventions aim to indiscriminately kill civilians.
Although the US-led invasion in 2003 provoked tragic loss of life among Iraqis, the claim that the US and its allied killed millions of Iraqi civilians is clearly exaggerated, and the article provides no evidence to support this claim. One of the best resources for tracking the number of civilians killed in Iraq is the site Iraqi body count. According to this site, the number of documented civilian deaths in Iraq (from the 2003 invasion until the beginning of 2017) caused by violence is 184,775 to 207,645. Further analysis of the WikiLeaks' Iraq War Logs may add 10,000 civilian deaths.
These figures include not only civilian deaths perpetrated by the US-lead coalition, but also by Iraqi state forces, anti-government forces, ISIS and unknown actors. When ISIS declared a Caliphate from the city of Mosul in June 2014 ISIS became the main cause of civilian deaths in Iraq.
A 2013 analysis by researchers from the US, Canada and Iraq estimates that 461,000 people died in Iraq as a result of war-related causes between the US-led invasion in 2003 and mid-2011. This toll includes not only violent deaths caused by the invasion and the subsequent insurgency but also deaths related to the collapse in Iraq of infrastructure and services.
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