The Washington Post reports:

A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

(snip)

Of the total 655,000 estimated "excess deaths," 601,000 resulted fromviolence and the rest from disease and other causes, according to thestudy. This is about 500 unexpected violent deaths per day throughoutthe country.

The survey was done by Iraqi physicians and overseen by epidemiologistsat Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health. Thefindings are being published online today by the British medicaljournal the Lancet.

For a PDF of the Lancet article, click here.