[newspetty]

ABC News:
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wikle...ry?id=11949670

The whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks today released a trove of classified reports about the war in Iraq that it said documented at least 109,000 deaths in the war, a higher number than the United States previously has acknowledged, as well as what it described as cases of torture and other abuses by Iraqi and coalition forces.

"The reports detail 109,032 deaths in Iraq, comprised of 66,081 'civilians'; 23,984 'enemy' (those labeled as insurgents); 15,196 'host nation' (Iraqi government forces) and 3,771 'friendly' (coalition forces)," WikiLeaks said in a statement regarding the documents' release. "The majority of the deaths (66,000, over 60 percent) of these are civilian deaths. That is 31 civilians dying every day during the six-year period."

When including military deaths of Iraqi security personnel or individuals the United States identified as insurgent targets "almost 50 Iraqis died on average in every single day reported by the logs," according to WikiLeaks.

The U.S. military long has maintained that it does not keep an official death tally, but earlier this month following a Freedom of Information Act request, the Pentagon said some 77,000 Iraqis had been killed from 2004 to 2008.

The massive leak follows WikiLeaks similar but smaller release on the war in Afghanistan. It was anticipated by the Pentagon, which has warned that publicizing the information could endanger U.S. troops.