PARIS, Oct 28: Around 100,000 Iraqi civilians have died as a result of the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, according to an estimate to be published on Friday by the British medical weekly The Lancet.

The research, based on interviews among Iraqi households and an extrapolation of the data, was led by experts from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, United States.

"Making conservative assumptions, we think that about 100,000 excess deaths or more have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq," the authors said.

"Violence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air-strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths."

Their figure is based on data from 988 households from 33 randomly-selected neighbourhoods in Iraq.

Fifty-two of the 73 reported deaths from violence occurred in a cluster around Fallujah, where US forces have waged fierce battles with militants.

If Fallujah is stripped out of the calculations, the overall estimate for the civilian tally nationwide comes to just under 100,000, at 98,000.

If it is included, the death toll would rise around 200,000, although the researchers stress that there is "substantial... uncertainty" in making a projection of that kind.

"Our results need further verification and should lead to changes to reduce non-combatant deaths from air-strikes," the authors add.-AFP