LONDON (Reuters):

American and Iraqi public health experts have calculated that about 655,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the March 2003 United States-led invasion and subsequent violence, far above previous estimates.

Researchers used household interviews rather than body counts to estimate how many more Iraqis had died because of the war than used to die annually in peacetime.

"We estimate that as a consequence of the coalition invasion of March 18, 2003, about 655,000 Iraqis have died, above the number that would be expected in a non-conflict situation," said Gilbert Burnham of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in the United States.