More than 1.3 million people have been killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan as a result of the so-called US war on terror in over a decade, and the majority of these deaths were innocent civilians, according to a new report.
The ongoing US-led war “has, directly or indirectly, killed around 1 million people in Iraq, 220,000 in Afghanistan and 80,000 in Pakistan,” according to a study by a group of international physicians’ organizations.
“The figure is approximately 10 times greater than that of which the public, experts and decision makers are aware,” the study’s authors write adding that “this is only a conservative estimate” and the total number of causalities “could also be in excess of 2 million.”
The report, released by the Nobel Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, along with Physicians for Social Responsibility and Physicians for Global on March 25, is titled “Body Count: Casualty Figures after 10 Years of the ‘War on Terror.'”
Approximately one million people were killed in Iraq during the course of the US-led invasion and occupation of the country from 2003 until 2011, the report said.
Americans assume that only 9,900 Iraqis on average were killed during the US occupation of Iraq, the report shows, adding the US citizens would be far more outraged if they “were made aware that the actual number is likely to be more than a hundred times higher.”
The study only examined deaths in the three countries of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, but did not include deaths in other countries attacked by American and its allied military forces, including Yemen, Somalia, Libya and Syria.
According to the study, while the United States closely monitors casualty figures for American and allied troops, the number of civilians and militants killed by US-led forces is “officially ignored.”
AHT/AT
