BAGHDAD: Sixty-year-old Haitham Fadhil Girgis’s carpentry business in the capital of war-torn Iraq is a roaring success. He specializes in coffins.

As a result of the deadly insurgency, Girgis’s carpentry shop in the central Karada district of town has never had it so good, but Girgis, a Christian, is not a happy man despite the money he has made over the past two years.

“Profits are growing, but life has become difficult,” said the burly, T-shirt clad Iraqi carpenter.

“I am making more money, but I am not happy about it.”

Coffin-makers across the war-battered country are in demand, especially since last year as the insurgency has grown ever more deadly.

With a daily fare of bombs and shootings up and down the country, barely a day goes by without fresh victims of the violence.

Almost 25,000 Iraqi civilians have died since US and British troops invaded the country, an average of 34 every single day, a British study said on Tuesday.

More of the deaths have been caused by the actions of foreign troops than by insurgents within the country, the study by Iraq Body Count and the Oxford Research Group said.

However, the report stressed that the vast majority of civilian deaths caused by US and British troops took place in the weeks following the start of war in March 2003 to topple Saddam Hussein.

Currently insurgents are responsible for most civilian deaths, and post-invasion criminal violence has accounted for almost the same number of deaths as were caused by US-led troops, the report said.

Carpenters acknowledge that coffin sales have surged in the last 18 months.

As the sale of coffins rise, a similar trend can be observed with the gravestone cutters.

—AFP