US-led forces, insurgents and criminal gangs have killed nearly 25,000 Iraqi civilians, police, and army recruits since the war began in March 2003, according to a new survey.
Nearly half the deaths in the two years surveyed to March 2005 were in Baghdad, where a fifth of Iraq's 25 million people live, according to media reports monitored by Iraq Body Count, a US-British non-government group.
Of the total, nearly 37 per cent were killed by US-led forces, the group said.
The US military and the Iraqi government disputed the findings. The US military said it did not target civilians.
"We do everything we can to avoid civilian casualties in all of our operations," said Lieutenant Colonel Steve Boylan, a spokesman in Baghdad. "Since the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom until now, we have categorically not targeted civilians. We take great care in all operations to ensure we go after the intended targets."
The Iraqi government said: "We welcome the attention given by this report to Iraqi victims of violence but we consider that it is mistaken in claiming that the plague of terrorism has killed fewer Iraqis than multi-national forces."
Iraq Body Count took its data, including figures showing more than 42,000 civilians were wounded in the same period, from an analysis of more than 10,000 press and media reports.
The death toll almost mirrors a UN-funded survey conducted last year, which found some 24,000 conflict-related deaths since the US-led invasion.
Another survey, published in Britain's Lancetmedical journal last October, found nearly 100,000 deaths in the 18 months after the invasion, more than half due to violence. These findings were contested by US and British officials.
Since the media in Iraq is forced to focus on Baghdad for security reasons, it is likely that Iraq Body Count's death toll throughout the country is under-estimated.
The Body Count survey would also appear not to capture the full extent of the devastation caused by insurgent car bombings. Over the past 18 months, hundreds of suicide car bombs have exploded around the country, killing well over 2,000 people.