Sunday, November 14, 2004

Civilian Casualties in Fallujah

A bit of news about Fallujah:
Civilian Cost of Fallujah.
Well, we'll see if my predictions of 500 civilain deaths seem to pan out, or if my more dismal prediction of 5000-10000 civilian deaths is closer.
Offhand, I 'd say that I am sticking with my earlier belief that there will be more than 100 hostile coalition fatalities, as we are now up to 62 (58 hostile American deaths, 4 hostile British deaths) plus 4 non-hostile deaths (all US). [From http://www.icasualties.org ].
Of course, 51 of the hostile and 2 of the non-hostile (all American) deaths occurred last Monday-Friday (Nov. 8-12), so how high the November total gets is greatly dependent on how much things die down now that we have taken Fallujah.
If the insurgency dies down to the levels of the first week of November (12 in 7 days), for the period from Nov. 13-30, we should end with 12/7 * 18 more deaths, or about 30, for a total of 92 more hostile deaths.
If the recent flare-up in the insurgency pushes the death toll much beyond that, there will be > 100 hostile fatalities.
In any case, I think that there will be fewer than 10 fatalities among non-American members of the coalition unless there is a single large-casualty attack, like the one against the Italians Nov. 12 of last year.

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