Actualité - Iraqi Death Tripled Last Semester

Washington, Jan 8 (Prensa Latina) - More than 17,000 Iraqis died in the last six months of 2006, one of the most lethal periods for the Arab country after the US-British occupation, The Washington Post revealed on Monday.

The daily quoted confidential information from the Iraqi Ministry of Health as saying that the figure represents a considerable increase compared to the first six months of last year, when about 6,000 people died.

An official from that ministry, who remained anonymous, told The Post that the figures are incomplete, so that death toll could be higher.

In October, the British medical magazine The Lancet reported that 654,965 people died between March 2003 and July 2006 in Iraq as a direct result of the occupation, which represents 2.5 percent of the population of that Arab country.

(Prensa Latina News Agency)