Conflict in Iraq has killed more than 600,000 people since the US-led invasion in March 2003, according to a controversial study published online yesterday by The Lancet, a leading medical journal. The researchers said their figure, far higher than any previous estimate, was more accurate than the death tolls produced by official Iraqi sources.

Gilbert Burnham of Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, carried out the survey with doctors from al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, interviewing a random sample of households throughout Iraq. They concluded that there were 655,000 "excess deaths" as a result of the war, equivalent to 2.5 per cent of the pop-ulation; 601,000 died through violence, usually gunfire.