War Room - Salon.com

Tuesday, Jul 18, 2006 10:53 EDT

U.N. report: Iraq on 100 dead a day

The equivalent of a 9/11 in the United States every two and a half days.

By Tim Grieve

According to a new United Nations report, nearly 6,000 Iraqi civilians were killed in sectarian fighting in May and June. As Reuters notes, any "estimates of mortality from violence" are necessarily approximate in "a country with barely functioning public institutions where relatives routinely remove the bodies of victims for burial with little legal formality." Still, even as a rough estimate, the U.N. number is more than a little breathtaking. Six thousand deaths in two months is almost 100 deaths a day in a country with just 26 million residents. Adjusted for population differences, that would be the equivalent of a 9/11 about every two and a half days in the United States.