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Many experts and expert groups from a range of fields are attempting to combine their knowledge to understand the lethality to Iraqis of the invasion and post-invasion violence in Iraq.

This is a slightly abridged and amended version of an invited "meta-analysis" of IBC's potential contribution to that understanding, presented in a closed meeting of the Ad Hoc Expert Group on mortality estimates for Iraq, convened by WHO in Geneva, May 2007.

Proportion of IBC non-cumulative deaths across incident sizes

Proportion of IBC deaths by incident size

If incidents involving larger numbers of people are the best reported, then this has implications for what we can conclude about the completeness of media coverage. The above graph shows that nearly 60% of all reported deaths between July 2006-March 2007 come from incidents where ten or more people were killed. Incidents with 5 or more people killed account for around 75% of all reported deaths. In the IBC data base, incidents where one person was killed account for less than 10% of all deaths in the period from July 2006 to April 2007 [data as at May, 2007].