Iraqis estimate civilian deaths at 150,000

BAGHDAD -- A stunning new death count emerged yesterday, as Iraq's health minister estimated 150,000 civilians have been killed in the war -- about three times previously accepted estimates.

Moderate Sunni Muslims, meanwhile, threatened to walk away from politics and pick up guns, while the Shi'ite-dominated government renewed pressure on the United States to unleash the Iraqi Army and claimed it could crush violence in six months.

After Democrats swept to majorities in both houses of the US Congress and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld resigned, Iraqis appeared unsettled and seemed to sense the potential for an even bloodier conflict because future American policy is uncertain. As a result, positions hardened on both sides of the country's deepening sectarian divide.

Previous estimates of Iraq deaths held that 45,000-50,000 have been killed in nearly 44 months of conflict, according to partial figures from Iraqi institutions and media reports. No official count has ever been available.

Health Minister Ali al-Shemari gave his new estimate of 150,000 to reporters during a visit to Vienna . He later said that he based the figure on an estimate of 100 bodies per day brought to morgues and hospitals -- though such a calculation would come out closer to 130,000 in total.

"It is an estimate," Shemari said. He blamed Sunni insurgents, Wahhabis -- Sunni religious extremists -- and criminal gangs for the deaths.

Hassan Salem, of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, said the 150,000 figure included civilians, police, and people who were abducted, later found dead, and collected at morgues run by the Health Ministry. SCIRI is Iraq's largest Shi'ite political organization and holds the largest number of seats in parliament.

In October, the British medical journal The Lancet published a controversial study contending nearly 655,000 Iraqis have died because of the war -- a far higher death toll than other estimates. The study, which was dismissed by President Bush and other US officials as not credible, was based on interviews of households and not a body count.

The head of the Baghdad central morgue said yesterday he was receiving as many as 60 violent death victims each day at his facility alone. Dr. Abdul-Razzaq al-Obaidi said those deaths did not include victims of violence whose bodies were taken to the city's many hospital morgues or those who were removed from attack scenes by relatives and quickly buried according to Muslim custom.

Obaidi said the morgue had received 1,600 violent death victims in October, one of the bloodiest months of the conflict. US forces suffered 105 deaths last month, the fourth highest monthly toll.

At least 45 Iraqis were killed or found dead in continuing sectarian violence yesterday, with 16 of the victims killed in bombings at Baghdad markets. For the fifth straight day, insurgent and militia mortar teams traded fire in the capital's northern neighborhoods.

Shemari reiterated the government's increasingly public and insistent demands for a speedier US transfer of authority to Iraqi forces and the withdrawal of American troops to their bases and from Iraq's cities and towns.