UK and US refuse to investigate Iraq casualties

An international group of public health experts have urged the US and UK to setup an independent investigation of war casaulties rated to the war in Iraq. Both government's have refused and will continue to use the figures produced by the Iraqi Ministry of Health which the experts contend vastly understate the number of caualties. The MoH lists less than 20,000 total casualties, while UK public health experts estimate that war has caused nearly 100,000 civilian deaths.

"Mr Straw told parliament, "The Lancet study suggests that there is an obligation deriving from article 27 of the Fourth Geneva Convention for the multinational force itself to have a reckoning of the number of civilian casualties it has caused. There is nothing in article 27, or elsewhere in the Fourth Geneva Convention, to support this suggestion.""