CAIRO, September 10 (IslamOnline.net) - As the United States declared that its soldiers killed in Iraq hit 1,000, Iraqis demand to know why so little international attention was being given to their rather large but forgotten victims, a leading British newspaper reported.

The Independent on Thursday, September 9, expressed fears that we may never know the exact number of the Iraqi victims of the US-led invasion.

The true figure, it maintained, could remain a mystery because many bodies are simply buried and the deaths never registered.

"Sometimes there are as many as 200 Iraqis killed in a single day," Amer Khuzaie, an Iraqi deputy health minister, told the paper.

Flicking through a file showing the casualty figures, Khuzaie went on: "The Iraqi people are being eradicated. We must stop this hemorrhage, this bleeding."

Iraqis regret that the US army does not mark the number of Iraqis killed since the invasion in March 2003.

The paper said the most conservative figure for the number dead is 10,000 as calculated by private groups.

But observers said the number could be much bigger, since many victims have gone unaccounted for due to the chaotic situation in the country after the US-led invasion.

"It is rising every day," the paper said.

The US military claimed that on Tuesday, September 7, it killed "100 militants" in air strikes on Fallujah on top of a further 33 people killed in fighting in Sadr City in Baghdad.

But, the Independent said, Iraqis suspect that in any case many of those who died were civilians.

The British daily said the Americans also have a much-feared practice of spraying fire in all directions when they come under attack.

Khuzaie admits that poor communications make it impossible to get a complete picture but he estimates that "in Najaf 400 civilians were killed and 2,500 wounded in the fighting last month."

In the close-packed heavily populated houses of Sadr City, home to two million people, the use of rockets and heavy machineguns by the US inflicts heavy casualties, the Independent added.

“Iraq is not just a dangerous place to live because of political violence.”

The British daily cites estimates by UNICEF, which it says in the 1990s that 500,000 children had died because of the collapse of health standards.

Infant mortality rose from 40 per 1,000 in 1990, before the 1991 Gulf War, to 108, 13 years later according to the World Health Organization.