Ammon News - AMMONNEWS - Nearly 242,000 people, civilians and combatants, have been killed since March 2003 after the US-led invasion of the country led to the downfall of former ruler Saddam Hussein, according to the British-based group Iraq Body Count, which bases its tally on media reports, hospital and morgue records, and official and non-governmental accounts.

According to the group, 2006 and 2007 were the bloodiest years in the country’s post-Saddam era as some 55,000 people were killed, mostly civilians in suicide and retaliatory bombings.

The death toll declined in 2012 to around 4600 after US troops withdrew from Iraq but with the advance of ISIS in the country in 2013 once again the number of casualties reached 9700 deaths in December 2014.

Other studies, however, have put the death toll considerably higher. An academic study published in 2013 argued that nearly half a million people had died from war-related causes in Iraq since 2003.

The research team from the universities of Washington, Simon Fraser and Johns Hopkins in cooperation with the Mustansiriya University in Baghdad based their tally on official and non-official sources.

Nearly 4500 US soldiers also died in the war along with some 32000 American soldiers wounded in the extended clashes.

Iraq’s Kurdistan region has been relatively spared the violence despite ISIS advance along its borders.

*Rudaw