Casualties of the Iraqi insurgency (2011–present) refers to deaths and injuries in Iraq after the withdrawal of US forces at the end of the Iraq War on 18 December 2011, as fighting continued between the Iraqi government and anti-government forces in the Iraqi insurgency (2011–2013) and later escalated into the War in Iraq (2014–2017) and subsequent Iraqi insurgency (2017–present).
Casualty statistics
Iraq Body Count
An independent UK/US group, the Iraq Body Count project (IBC) compiles documented (not estimated) Iraqi civilian deaths from violence since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, including those caused directly by US-led coalition and Iraqi government forces and paramilitary or criminal attacks by others. It shows a total range of at least 175,792 to 196,572 civilian deaths in the whole conflict from March 2003 to June 2017.
Following are the monthly IBC Project civilian death totals, from the US pullout in December 2011 onwards.
The numbers include only civilians. The IBC includes non-paramilitary police forces as civilians, and members of the Iraqi Army or paramilitary/militia forces when the death is a result of summary execution after capture. The IBC does a constant check on all its reports, and publishes weekly updates to its monthly casualty table. Consequently, the figures for the last few months in the table above should always be considered preliminary and will be marked in italic until confirmed by IBC.
According to IBC, of the 17,049 civilians recorded killed in 2014 (a figure it later revised upwards), 4,325 were killed by ISIL, 1,748 by Iraqi military airstrikes and 118 by US-coalition airstrikes. A further 10,858 civilians were reported killed by unidentified actors. Of the 16,115 civilians recorded killed in 2015, 8,347 were killed by execution (the killing of captives) and 1,295 by airstrikes; 8,818 civilian deaths involved ISIL and 1,492 involved Iraqi government forces.
Besides continuously updating documented civilian deaths from violence, from time to time IBC also puts out estimates of combatants killed (including Iraqi military and insurgent groups): at the end of 2014, it estimated a lower range of 4,000-5,000 combatants killed in 2014 (based on AFP and official statistics released by Iraqi government ministries) and a higher range of 30,000 combatants killed (based on aggregated media reports), concluding that "the truth probably lies somewhere between these two numbers". At the end of 2015, IBC estimated that, between June 2014 and December 2015, over 4,000 Iraqi soldiers and allied militia were killed, as well as over 1,500 Peshmerga and Kurdish security force members and some 13,000 ISIS fighters. It put the total death toll for insurgents, Iraqi soldiers and other combatants killed in the period 2010–2015 at 24,340.
Iraqi government figures
The Iraqi government releases its own figures, usually on the first day of each month. These are almost always significantly lower than other estimates and often even contradict with news reports, leading to an apparent "under-reporting" of casualty figures, although after the escalation of violence in the summer of 2013 the casualty tolls began to "catch up" with independent estimates. Most news outlets still report on these, and JustPolicy.org has a running estimate based on the Lancet study with the rate of increase derived from the Iraq Body Count.
A running tally of all the figures can be found at Google Docs, courtesy of Agence France-Presse. The numbers include civilians, as well as members of the Iraqi Army and police forces.
The Iraqi government also compiles the number of wounded from these three categories, as well as the number of killed and captured insurgents. From the beginning of December 2011 until the end of March 2014, at least 19,829 Iraqis have been injured according to these reports, including 2,688 police officers and 2,319 members of the Iraqi Army. During the same period, 1,350 insurgents were killed, while a total of 4,403 suspects were arrested.
United Nations figures
The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) keeps its own statistics on casualties. They include killed and injured civilians (including police) and killed and injured members of Iraqi Security Forces (including Peshmerga and militias fighting alongside the Iraqi Army). They don't include anti-government insurgents. UNAMI warns that it may be under-reporting casualties and that the figures it provides "have to be considered as the absolute minimum".
According to UNAMI, the total number of civilian casualties (killed and injured) in 2013 (including police) was 25,799 (7,818 killed and 17,981 injured).