"One cold London morning in January, I received a phone call from one of my brothers. Uncle Kakarash was dead, killed by American soldiers at a checkpoint. He was my mother's brother, 75, and like most Kurds had suffered greatly under Saddam and welcomed the Americans as liberators. Civilians in Iraq face everyday hazards beyond the snipers and the insurgents' bombs - hundreds have been run over by tanks or hit by stray bullets or shot at checkpoints. There are no records kept of the numbers of civilians killed during the war or by coalition troops."