Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that can help answer the question.
Query: How many people died during the Invasion of Iran?
The Iranian army was armed with the vz. 24 rifle, a Czech version of the German Mauser. Iran had bought 100 FT-6 and Panzer 38(t) light tanks and additional LaFrance TK-6 armoured cars, enough to outfit their 1st and 2nd divisions. Further Iranian orders had been delayed by World War II. While it was a large order and they were excellent tanks, they were not enough to defeat a multi-front invasion by two great powers. The changing nature of tank warfare in the 1930s made all but 50 of them obsolete when the invasion began. Prior to the attack, the RAF dropped leaflets on Iranian troops, asking them not to fight and to understand their country was "not threatened" as it was being "liberated" from possible Nazi destruction.
The Iranians had little time to organise a defence, as the Allies achieved a tactical surprise. The war began in the early morning hours of 25 August, when RAF aircraft entered Iranian airspace. They bombed targets in the cities of Tehran and Qazvin and various other towns and dropped leaflets urging the Iranians to surrender. The Soviets bombed targets in cities such as Tabriz, Ardabil and Rasht. Civilian and residential areas were hit, and several hundred people were killed and wounded. Reza Shah refused requests by his generals to destroy the road and transportation networks, largely because he did not want to damage the infrastructure that he had painstakingly built during his reign. That contributed to the speedy victory of the Allies.
Some 7 million combatants on both sides are estimated to have died during World War I, along with an estimated 10 million non-combatants, including 6.6 million civilians. The civilian casualty ratio in this estimate would be about 59%. Boris Urlanis notes a lack of data on civilian losses in the Ottoman Empire, but estimates 8.6 million military killed and dead and 6 million civilians killed and dead in the other warring countries. The civilian casualty ratio in this estimate would be about 42%. Most of the civilian fatalities were due to famine, typhus, or Spanish flu rather than combat action. The relatively low ratio of civilian casualties in this war is due to the fact that the front lines on the main battlefront, the Western Front, were static for most of the war, so that civilians were able to avoid the combat zones.
Several other factors contributed to strong opposition to the Shah amongst certain groups within Iran, the most significant of which were US and UK support for his regime, and clashes with leftists and Islamists. By 1979, political unrest had transformed into a revolution which, on 17 January, forced him to leave Iran. Soon thereafter, the Iranian monarchy was formally abolished, and Iran was declared an Islamic republic led by Ruhollah Khomeini. Facing likely execution should he return to Iran, he died in exile in Egypt, whose president, Anwar Sadat, had granted him asylum. Due to his status as the last Shah of Iran, he is often known as simply "The Shah".
While the U.S. has linked its support for a Palestinian state to acceptance of Israel's "right to exist," Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has retorted that Israel should be moved to Europe instead, reiterating Muammar al-Gaddafi's 1990 statement. The U.S. has sent signals to Iran that its posturing against Israel's right to exist is unacceptable in their opinion, leading to increased speculation of a U.S. led attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. Even though Iran has denied involvement in Iraq, then-President Bush warned of "consequences," sending a clear message to Iran that the U.S. may take military action against it. The Bush administration considered Iran to be the world's leading state supporter of terrorism. Iran has been on the U.S. list of state sponsors of international terrorism since 1984, a claim that Iran and Ahmadinejad have denied.
The total number of deaths includes from 9 to 11 million military personnel. The civilian death toll was about 8 million, including about 6 million due to war-related famine and disease. The Triple Entente (also known as the Allies) lost about 6 million military personnel while the Central Powers lost about 4 million. At least 2 million died from diseases and 6 million went missing, presumed dead. This article lists the casualties of the belligerent powers based on official published sources.
The September 11, 2001 attacks, orchestrated by al-Qaeda, has been called "the worst attack on American soil since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor which thrust the United States into World War II". They involved the hijacking of four large passenger jet airliners because their long transcontinental flight plans meant they carried more fuel, allowing a bigger explosion on impact (unlike earlier airline hijackings, the primary focus was the planes, not the passengers). Two planes were deliberately flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, destroying both 110 story skyscrapers within less than two hours, and a third was flown into the Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, causing severe damage to the west side of the building. These attacks resulted in the deaths of 221 people (including the 15 hijackers) on board the three planes as well as 2,731 more in and around the targeted buildings. A fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after a revolt by the plane's passengers, killing all 44 people (including the four hijackers) on board. In total, the attacks killed 2,996 people and injured more than 6,000 others. The U.S. stock market closed for four trading days after the attacks (the first time it had an unscheduled closing since the Great Depression). Nine days after the attack, U.S. President George W. Bush called for a "War on Terror" and shortly thereafter launched the War in Afghanistan to find and capture Osama bin Laden, the head of the al-Qaeda organization that mounted the 9/11 attacks.
After the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iraqi and foreign insurgents carried out waves of suicide bombings. More attacks have been carried out in Iraq (1938 as of mid-2015) than in any other country.
In World War I, in Ottoman-ruled Syria the total number of civilian casualties was as many as 500,000. The civilian casualties of Greater Syria, including Akkar, were covered in a detailed article by Linda Schatkowski Schilcher. Scholars acknowledge one particular reason for civilian deaths attributed to Germany (Ottoman ally in World War I), the callousness of German military officials in Syria, and systematic hoarding by the population at large.
"On September 11, 2001, 19 militants associated with the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda hijacked four airliners and carried out suicide attacks against targets in the United States. Two of the planes were flown into the towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, a third plane hit the Pentagon just outside Washington, D.C., and the fourth plane crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. The total number of people killed because of these attacks was 2,753. The ratio of men to women killed during the attacks was 3:1. Faludi talks in depth about how mass amounts of volunteers arrived to help the victims rescued for the World Trade Center Towers. However, there were very few victims to help. 21,744 remains were found while only 291 bodies were found "intact".
The Arab conquest of Persia led to a period of extreme urbanisation in Iran, starting with the ascension of the Abbasid dynasty and ending in the 11th century CE. This was particularly true for the eastern parts of the country, for regions like Khorasan and Transoxiana. During this period, Iran saw the development of massive metropolises, some reaching population numbers of up to 200,000 people. Before this period, the important Persian cities had been situated outside of Persia proper, especially in Mesopotamia. This period of extreme urbanisation was followed in the 11th century by a collapse of the Iranian economy, which led to large scale emigrations of Iranians into Central Asia, India, the rest of the Middle East, and Anatolia. This catastrophe has been cited by some as reason for the Persian language becoming widespread throughout Central Asia and large parts of the Middle East.
The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I were about 40 million: estimates range from 15 to 19 million deaths and about 23 million wounded military personnel, ranking it among the deadliest conflicts in human history.
After the deposition of Mossadegh in 1953, the reign of shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was the most prosperous era for the Jews of Iran. In the 1970s, only 1% of Iranian Jews were classified as lower class; 80% were middle class and 10% wealthy. Although Jews accounted for only a small percentage of Iran's population, in 1979 two of the 18 members of the Iranian Academy of Sciences, 80 of the 4,000 university lecturers, and 600 of the 10,000 physicians in Iran were Jews.
A 2012 national telephone survey of a sample of 400 Iranian-Americans, commissioned by the Public Affairs Alliance of Iranian Americans and conducted by Zogby Research Services, asked the respondents what their religions were. The responses broke down as follows: Muslim 31%, atheist/realist/humanist 11%, agnostic 8%, Baha’i 7%, Jewish 5%, Protestant 5%, Roman Catholic 2%, Zoroastrian 2%, "Other" 15%, and "No response" 15%. The survey had a cooperation rate of 31.2%. The margin of error for the results was +/- 5 percentage points, with higher margins of error for sub-groups. Notably, the number of Muslims decreased from 42% in 2008 to 31% in 2012.
Estimates for the total number of casualties in the war vary, because many deaths went unrecorded. Most suggest that some 60 million people died in the war, including about 20 million military personnel and 40 million civilians.
Many of the civilians died because of deliberate genocide, massacres, mass-bombings, disease, and starvation.
At least 65 Palestinians, including at least 17 children, 14 women and 4 elderly were killed and 288 Palestinians were wounded according to Shifa hospital's director, Naser Tattar. The United Nations' Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People put the estimate at over 70 Palestinian dead. Other reports at the time claimed 120 Palestinians had been killed, a third women and children. According to the spokesman for the Palestinian Ministry of Health, Ashraf al-Qidra, rescue teams retrieved more than 80 dead bodies from houses destroyed in Shuja'iyya, 17 of which were children, 14 women and 4 elderly people.
On the morning of 11 September 2001, a total of 19 Arab men—15 of whom were from Saudi Arabia—carried out four coordinated attacks in the United States. Four commercial passenger jet airliners were hijacked. The hijackers – members of al-Qaeda's Hamburg cell – intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing everyone on board and more than 2,000 people in the buildings. Both buildings collapsed within two hours from damage related to the crashes, destroying nearby buildings and damaging others. The hijackers crashed a third airliner into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C. The fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville, in rural Pennsylvania, after some of its passengers and flight crew attempted to retake control of the plane, which the hijackers had redirected toward Washington, D.C., to target the White House, or the U.S. Capitol. No one aboard the flights survived. According to the New York State Health Department, the death toll among responders including firefighters and police was 836 as of June 2009. Total deaths were 2,996, including the 19 hijackers.
In mid-January 2006, Operation Paradoxical was replaced by Operation Traction: the SAS update/integration into JSOC, they deployed TGHG (Task Group Headquarters Group): this included senior officers and other senior members of 22 SAS - to JSOCs base at Balad. This was the first deployment of TGHG to Iraq since the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the upgrade now meant that the SAS were "joined at the hip" with JSOC and it gave the SAS a pivatol role against Sunni militant groups, particularly AQI In March 2006, members of B squadron SAS were involved in the release of peace activists Norman Kember, James Loney and Harmeet Singh Sooden. The three men had been held hostage in Iraq for 118 days during the Christian Peacemaker hostage crisis. in April 2006 B squadron, launched Operation Larchwood 4 which was an intelligence coup which led to the death of AQI's leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. In November 2006, Sergeant Jon Hollingsworth was killed in Basra whilst assaulting a house containing a senior al-Qaeda member; he was decorated for his service in this unit. On 20 March 2007 G squadron raided a house in Basra and captured Qais Khazali; a senior Shia militant and an Iranian proxy, his brother and Ali Mussa Daqduq, without casualties. The raid turned out to be most significant raid conducted by British forces in Iraq, gaining valuable intelligence on Iranian involvement in the Shia insurgency. During the Spring and summer of 2007, the SAS suffered several men seriously wounded as it extended its operations into Sadr City. From 2007 to early 2008, A squadron achieved "extraordinary" success impact in destroying al-Qaeda's VIBED network in Iraq, ultimately saving lives. In early 2008, B squadron carried out the regiments first HAHO parachute assault in Iraq. In May 2008, the SAS replaced their Humvee's for new Bushmaster armoured vehicles. On 30 May 2009, Operation Crichton; the UKSF deployment to Iraq ended, over the course of the war, 6 SAS soldiers were killed and a further 30 injured.
Shuja'iyya had been a frequent target in Israel's 2008-09 airstrikes of the Gaza Strip, which killed several members of Hamas' security forces and destroyed the local police station. A coalition of Hamas and Islamic Jihad forces battled intensely with the IDF days after the airstrikes. Hamas claimed to have lost three fighters, including a local commander after an Israeli airstrike and the Fatah-affiliated al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades lost a fighter after ambushing undercover Israeli forces in the district. A women and children's clinic was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike during the hostilities with no casualties reported.
Unexploded Israeli ordnance left over from the bombing exploded in late September killing a further two young men, Ayman Ziad Abu Jibba (23) and Abdullah Jibril Abu Aser (23) and wounding three in Shuja'iyya.
Estimates for the total casualties of World War II vary, but most suggest that some 60 million people died in the war, including about 20 million soldiers and 40 million civilians. The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people during the war, about half of all World War II casualties. The largest number of civilian deaths in a single city was 1.2 million citizens dead during the 872-day Siege of Leningrad. Based on 1860 census figures, 8% of all white American males aged 13 to 50 died in the American Civil War. Of the 60 million European soldiers who were mobilized in World War I, 8 million were killed, 7 million were permanently disabled, and 15 million were seriously injured.
Beverly Hills and the Los Angeles communities of Bel-Air and Brentwood were the destinations of many Iranian immigrants, who were the first immigrant groups to settle in these communities. In addition to those places Iranians also live in Santa Monica, West Los Angeles, and Westwood. As of 2007 there were about 8,000 Iranians in Beverly Hills, making up about 20% of the city's population, and as of 1990 the majority of Iranians in Beverly Hills were Jewish. By that year many Iranian restaurants and businesses were established in a portion of Westwood Boulevard south of Wilshire Boulevard. In 1990 Ivan Light, a sociologist for the University of California, Los Angeles, stated that the Westwood Boulevard area was the only "central location" for Iranians in Los Angeles and that they were otherwise dispersed throughout the area.
In August 2014, the SAS were reported to be part of Operation Shader - the British participation in the ongoing military intervention against ISIL.They were reported to be on the ground gathering intelligence and helping with the evacuation of Yazidi refugees from the Sinjar mountains. Also they have reportedly been helping Kurdish forces in northern Iraq as well as carrying out operations in Syria. In particular on May 15, the SAS confirmed the presence in al-Amr of a senior leader, Abu Sayyaf, who was then killed in an assault by US Special Forces. In October 2016, the "Guardian" reported that the SAS along with the Australian SASR are active in northern Iraq with US forces, where they have been calling in airstrikes in support of both Kurdish and Iraqi advances against ISIL. In November 2016, the "Independent" reported that the SAS and other British special forces, as part of a multinational special forces operation, were given a list of 200 British jihadist to kill or capture before they attempt to return to the UK. The 200 jihadist are senior members of ISIL that pose a direct threat to the UK, the list of British men and women has been compiled from intelligence supplied by MI5, MI6 and GCHQ; Sources said SAS soldiers have been told that the mission could be the most important in the regiment’s 75-year history. SAS snipers targeted ISIL insurgents, employing sniper rifles such as the IWI DAN .338 and Barrett M82A1 .50 BMG.
The next day, however, the Soviet Air Force moved into action, using many heavy bombers. In groups of 4 aircraft each, their bombers attacked military positions and civilian targets throughout Gilan, including Bandar Pahlavi and Rasht. At least 200 civilians were killed during the bombings. The bombings also destroyed many Iranian positions, and resistance was finally crushed by the 44th Army advancing from land, capturing both cities. Fighting was very intense, and the Soviets took their heaviest casualties of the invasion here. However, lacking armour and air power, the Iranians could not stop the enemy. On 28 August, they were forced to surrender. Nevertheless, some Iranian forces refused to accept defeat, and retreated to Ramsar to continue fighting. Their efforts were undercut when the Iranian government announced a ceasefire the next day. By then, the Soviet forces had reached the city of Chalus, meaning that they could cross the Chalus Highway (Jadeh-e-Chalus) and reach Tehran across the Alborz Mountains.
During the 2017 Tehran attacks on the Islamic Consultative Assembly (Iran's parliament) and the Mausoleum of Ruhollah Khomeini 18 people died (excluding the attackers). The responsibility was claimed by ISIL. The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) subsequently vowed retaliation for the attacks. Supreme Leader of Iran seyed Ali Khamenei stated on his website that Iran would "slap its enemies" in connection with the Tehran attacks. Hours before the missile strike, Iranian Army’s rapid response forces were deployed in the country's western border areas.
The October 2004 "Lancet" study done by public health experts from Johns Hopkins University and published on October 29, 2004, in "The Lancet" medical journal, estimated that 100,000 "excess" Iraqi deaths from all causes had occurred since the U.S. invasion began. The study did not attempt to measure how many of these were civilian, but the study's authors have said they believe that the "vast majority" were non-combatants, based on 7% of the casualties being women and 46% being children under the age of 15 (including Falluja data). To arrive at these excess death figures, a survey was taken from 988 Iraqi households in 33 clusters throughout Iraq, in which the residents were asked how many people lived there and how many births and deaths there had been since the war began. They then compared the death rate with the average from the 15 months before the war. Iraqis were found to be 1.5 times more likely to die from all causes after the invasion (rising from 0.5% to 0.79% per year) than in the 15 months preceding the war, producing an estimate of 98,000 excess deaths. This figure excluded data from one cluster in Falluja, which was deemed too much of an outlier for inclusion in the national estimate. If it included data from Falluja, which showed a higher rate of violent deaths than the other 32 clusters combined, the increased death rate would be raised from 1.5 to 2.5-fold, violent deaths would be 58 times more likely with most of them due to air-strikes by coalition forces, and an additional 200,000 fatalities would be estimated.
Iraq's health minister estimated during a press conference in November 2006 that between 100,000 and 150,000 people had died since the invasion in 2003, based on an estimate of around 100 deaths per day brought to morgues and hospitals during 2006, while saying that the "Lancet" estimates were an "exaggerated number".