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The study is the latest in a long series of attempts to come up with realistic numbers of civilian deaths. The numbers are politically fraught, and researchers' work has been further complicated by problems in collecting data while working in a war zone. The estimates have varied widely. The Iraq Body Count, a nongovernmental group based in Britain that bases its numbers on news media accounts, put the number of civilians dead at 47,668 during the same period of time as the World Health Organization study, the W.H.O. report said. President Bush in the past used a number that was similar to one put forward at the time by the Iraq Body Count. But another study, by Johns Hopkins, which has come under criticism for its methodology, cited an estimate of about 600,000 dead between the war's start, in March 2003, and July 2006. The World Health Organization said its study, based on interviews with families, indicated with a 95 percent degree of statistical certainty that between 104,000 and 223,000 civilians had died. It based its estimate of 151,000 deaths on that range. Those figures made violence the leading cause of adult male deaths in Iraq and one of the leading causes of death for the population as a whole, the health organization research team reported online in the New England Journal of Medicine. More than half the violent deaths occurred in Baghdad. While the new study appears to have the broadest scope to date, increasing its reliability, well known limitations of such efforts in war areas make it unlikely to resolve debate about the extent of the killing in Iraq. Iraqi officials gave conflicting assessments of the newest study, with one senior Health Ministry official praising it and another saying the numbers were exaggerated. The White House said that it had not seen the study and would not comment on its estimated death toll, but that the recent increase in American forces had reduced civilian and military casualties. "We mourn

"The Iraq Index is a statistical compilation of economic, public opinion, and security data. This resource will provide updated information on various criteria, including crime, telephone and water service, troop fatalities, unemployment, Iraqi security forces, oil production, and coalition troop strength. "

NOTE ON THE METHODOLOGY OF THE IRAQ INDEX: Although the footnotes to the Iraq Index document our sources in detail, it is worth noting here a few broad points. The majority of our information comes from the U.S. Government, though we must often analyze it and process it further to show trends over the full period since Saddam Hussein fell in 2003. Some information comes from foreign journalists on the ground and from nongovernmental organizations; a very modest amount to date comes from Iraqi sources. Most tables and charts are straightforward representations of data as we obtain it from the above primary sources, with only modest further analysis and processing required. However, a few graphics, such as those on crime and unemployment rates, require more methodological work (and more assumptions) on our part-and are as a result also perhaps somewhat less precise than most of the tables and charts.