Mark Kukis, who is reporting for TIME in Baghdad, files this report describing the estimated 60,481 civilians who have been killed in Iraq since the beginning of the war.
Executions with firearms, not bomb blasts, have killed most civilians in Iraq. Researchers say 33% of the victims examined in the study died by execution after abduction or capture. And 29% of those victims had signs of torture on their bodies such as bruises, drill holes or burns. Suicide bombers in cars or on foot were responsible for 14% of the victims in the study, while U.S. airstrikes killed 4%.
UPDATE: Commenter Paul Dirks points out, via Twitter, that while the study looked at about 60,000 civilian deaths, the total reported number of civilian deaths cited in the study is 91,358. The authors of the study, which can be read here, explain the more narrow sample this way:
Of the total of 91,358 Iraqi civilian deaths from armed violence recorded for this period, we excluded 10,027 deaths from prolonged violence (e.g., the two sieges of Fallujah and prolonged episodes of violence during the invasion of March 20, 2003, through April 30, 2003), and 20,850 deaths recorded only in aggregate reports from morgues and hospitals, since these deaths were not reliably linked to specific events of a weapon’s use.