New Calls for Coalition Forces to Count Iraqi Casualties

''The adamant refusal of the U.S.A. and its partner countries to keep count of Iraqi deaths is a stance that renders farcical the Geneva Conventions' principle that invading forces have a duty to make every effort to protect civilian lives,'' said an editorial in this week's issue of The Lancet, released late Thursday. ''How can the coalition attest that it respects this obligation if it refuses to collect data to prove it?'
''The U.S.-led Coalition that instigated the war claims to have acted on behalf of the Iraqi people,'' The Lancet added. ''At the very least, Iraq's beleaguered citizens deserve to be told the true price--in numbers of lost human lives--they have paid for a conflict undertaken in their names.''
The journal cited the work of Iraq Body Count (IBC), a British-U.S. non-profit group that last week reported that 24,865 civilians had died in the two years since the war in Iraq began in March 2003. The IBC database, from which data for the dossier were drawn, lists only those deaths reported by two or more news agencies, The Lancet said.