25,000 civilians killed in Iraq in two years

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

However, the report stresses 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, while currently far more deaths occur due to insurgency.

The estimate of 24,865 deaths over the two-year period to March this year is considerably lower than a number of 98,000 suggested in a study published last October by British-based medical journal The Lancet.

Nonetheless, the new report focuses attention on the suffering of Iraq's civilians, following a recent spate of suicide bombings, which have killed more than 100 people in the past few days.

The report, "A Dossier on Civilian Casualties in Iraq 2003-2005", by a team led by John Sloboda from Britain's Keele University, analysed more than 10,000 media reports, many from Iraqi journalists and sourced from mortuary officials and medical staff.

In contrast, the study by The Lancet was based on a sample of 988 households in 33 randomly-selected neighbourhoods in Iraq, with the figures extrapolated for the whole country.