Some 9 to 10 million combatants on both sides are estimated to have died during World War I, along with an estimated 6.6 million civilians.[citation needed] The civilian casualty ratio in World War I is therefore approximately 2:3 or 40%. Most of the civilian fatalities were due to famine or Spanish flu rather than military action. The relatively low ratio of civilian casualties in this war is due to the fact that the front lines on the main battlefront, the Western Front, were static for most of the war, so that civilians were able to avoid the combat zones. According to most sources, World War II was the most lethal war in world history, with some 70 million killed in six years. The civilian to combatant fatality ratio in World War II lies somewhere between 3:2 and 2:1, or from 60% to 67%. According to a 2010 assessment by John Sloboda of Iraq Body Count, a United Kingdom-based organization, American and Coalition forces had killed at least 28,736 combatants as well as 13,807 civilians in the Iraq War, indicating a civilian to combatant casualty ratio inflicted by coalition forces of 1:2. However, overall, figures by the Iraq Body Count from 20 March 2003 to 14 March 2013 indicate that of 174,000 casualties only 39,900 were combatants, resulting in a civilian casualty rate of 77%. Journalist and commentator Evelyn Gordon writes in Commentary that the civilian casualty ratio in Operation Cast Lead was 39 percent (2:3), using however only the preliminary Israeli estimates, but that 56 or 74 percent were civilians according to BTselems figures, depending on whether 248 Hamas policemen are considered combatants or civilians; and 65 or 83 percent according to the figures of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. Gordon notes that all of these ratios, even if the worse were correct, are lower than the normal civilian-to-combatant wartime fatality ratio in wars elsewhere ~ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilian_casualty_ratio
Posted on: Sat, 27 Sep 2014 23:59:05 +0000
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