3,663 Iraqis killed in past 6 months

(AP): Saturday's vote on Iraq's new constitution takes place nearly six months after the country's first elected government took power, and during that period at least 3,663 Iraqis have been killed in war-related violence, according to an Associated Press count.

The current interim government took power on April 28 after long negotiations that followed parliamentary elections in January.

The AP gathered the statistics on Iraqi dead on a daily basis from hospital officials, Iraqi police, the Iraqi military and other government officials.

The Iraqi deaths include civilians, bodyguards, police, security forces and the military. They do not include the nearly 1,000 Shiite pilgrims killed in an Aug. 21 stampede on a Baghdad bridge that began when rumors spread through the crowd that a suicide bomber was among the faithful.

As of Thursday, the AP count also showed that at least 395 members of the U.S. military have died in the same period.

Since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, at least 1,970 members of the U.S. military have died, according to a separate AP count. At least 1,531 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers. The figures include five military civilians.

There is no way to compare the Iraqi death toll from April 28 to present with earlier periods because it was impossible to obtain figures from many areas of the country. Also there is still no single central source for war-related Iraqi deaths.