Untitled Document
 |
Iraqi army troops stand by
blast protection walls while guarding a voting station in Abu Ghraib,
Iraq, Friday, Oct. 14 2005. U.S. and Iraqi forces stepped up security
across Iraq and prepared to impose an overnight curfew in an effort to
reduce insurgent attacks aimed at wrecking this weekend's constitutional
referendum. |
Saturday's vote on Iraq's new constitution takes place nearly six months
after the country's first elected government took power, and during that period
at least 3,663 Iraqis have been killed in war-related violence, according to
an Associated Press count.
The current interim government took power on April 28 after long negotiations
that followed parliamentary elections in January.
The AP gathered the statistics on Iraqi dead on a daily basis from hospital
officials, Iraqi police, the Iraqi military and other government officials.
The Iraqi deaths include civilians, bodyguards, police, security forces
and the military. They do not include the nearly 1,000 Shiite pilgrims killed
in an Aug. 21 stampede on a Baghdad bridge that began when rumors spread through
the crowd that a suicide bomber was among the faithful.
As of Thursday, the AP count also showed that at least 395 members of the U.S.
military have died in the same period.
Since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, at least 1,970 members of
the U.S. military have died, according to a separate AP count. At least 1,531
died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers. The
figures include five military civilians.
There is no way to compare the Iraqi death toll from April 28 to present with
earlier periods because it was impossible to obtain figures from many areas
of the country. Also there is still no single central source for war-related
Iraqi deaths.
