The WHO settled on an estimate of 1,51,000 deaths for this period. This is three times the 47,668 deaths for this period put forward by Iraq Body Count which collects figures from Iraqi newspapers. The organisation admits, however, that the majority of deaths may not be reported in the print media.

Another study carried out by Johns Hopkins University in the US covering the same period as the WHO survey cited an overall figure of 601,027 Iraqi civilian deaths due to the US war and occupation. The UN mission in Iraq put 2006 daily civilian fatalities at more than 100 a day.

The WHO figures are problematical. The media has focused on violent deaths, rather than total post-war deaths above the norm from illness, disease, and malnutrition resulting from the destruction of the country's physical and administrative infrastructure, and the disintegration of society. WHO says these deaths nearly double the average to 3,02,000.

The WHO study, which was based on interviews with 9,345 heads of families across the country, may also have been skewed because of its connection with the current Iraqi government.

The survey was a cooperative effort with the Iraqi Ministry of Health which has been both releasing and suppressing figures over the past few years, depending on political pressures.

The Ministry, which is under the control of the faction of radical Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, cannot be considered a reliable source. It has installed hospital guards who have terrorised doctors and kidnapped and killed Sunni patients and their families. Respondents may have concealed rather than revealed family deaths. 

Researchers were excluded from Sunni quarters in Baghdad, Sunni-majority Anbar province, the country's largest, and nine other areas for which projections were made.

The Survey does not apply to the situation after June 2006, excluding the surge in sectarian killings and ethnic cleansing which took place in the wake of the bombing of an important Shia shrine in Samarra in February of that year.

Since the 2003 war, Iraq's capital has been transformed from being a 65 per cent Sunni city into a 75 per cent Shia city. Eighty per cent of the 1.5 million refugees living in Syria are said to be from Baghdad.

The 1,51,000 average of violent deaths is 17 times the 2001-2002 baseline. This 39 month figure gives a much higher death rate than that of the entire 35 year reign (1968-2003) of Saddam Hussein's Baath party.
This figure, put forward by his opponents, has been proven to have been exaggerated because the number of bodies exhumed from mass graves have not substantiated pre-war claims.