To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what recent estimate his Department has made of the number of (a) combatant and (b) non-combatant deaths during the conflict in Iraq; and how this number was calculated.

holding answer 21 March 2005

A total of 76 UK Service personnel have died while serving on Operation Telic, 49 of whom were killed in action. A further 10 are missing believed killed in the C130 crash on 30 January, the cause of the crash is under investigation.

The United Kingdom armed forces do not have the information that would enable a reliable estimate of the total number of combatant or non-combatant Iraqi casualties arising from the conflict to be made. This is because UK military reporting is limited to UK area of operations. But even within the UK area of operations reporting is limited to what troops observe directly or learn from reliable sources.