'25,000 civilians' killed in IraqNearly 25,000 civilians have died violently in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003, a report says.
The dossier, based on media reports, says US-led forces were responsible for more than a third of the deaths.
The survey was carried out by the UK-based Iraq Body Count and Oxford Research Group - which includes academics and peace activists.
The Iraqi government criticised their conclusions, saying Iraqis were most at risk from insurgents who target them.
The Dossier on Civilian Casualties in Iraq 2003-2005 says 37% of all non-combatant deaths were caused by the US-led coalition.
Most of these occurred during the invasion phase, which it counts as ending on 1 May 2003.
But killings by anti-occupation and criminal elements also increased steadily over the entire two-year period.
Insurgents are said to have caused 9% of the deaths, while post-invasion criminal violence was responsible for another 36%.
Targets
The number of civilians who have died has almost doubled in the second year from the first, according to the report.
Almost a fifth of the 24,865 deaths were women or children and nearly half of all the civilian deaths were reported in the capital Baghdad.
"On average, 34 ordinary Iraqis have met violent deaths every day since the invasion of March 2003," said John Sloboda, one of the authors of the report.
"The ever-mounting Iraqi death toll is the forgotten cost of the decision to go to war in Iraq," he added.
Mr Sloboda also said: "It remains a matter of the gravest concern that, nearly two-and-a-half years on, neither the US nor the UK governments have begun to systematically measure the impact of their actions in terms of human lives destroyed."
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