"About 150,000 Iraqis have been killed by insurgents since the U.S.-led invasion more than three years ago, a senior Iraqi official said Thursday.

For every person killed about three have been wounded in violence since the war started in March 2003, Iraq's Health Minister Ali al-Shemari told reporters in Vienna.

It was the first overall casualty figure for the war to be released by the Iraqi government, which took office on May 20.

Al-Shemari did not explain how he arrived at the figure or say whether that number included Iraqi soldiers and police, as well as civilians. Also unclear was if it included Iraqis killed in sectarian violence or only in insurgent attacks. But he said the count was of "innocent" victims, suggesting civilians only.

In October, the British medical journal The Lancet published a controversial study contending nearly 655,000 Iraqis have died because of the war ? a far higher death toll than other estimates. The study, which was dismissed by President Bush and other U.S. officials as not credible, was based on interviews of households and not a body count.

Al-Shemari disputed that figure on Thursday.

"Since three and a half years, since the change of the Saddam regime, some people say we have 600,000 are killed. This is an exaggerated number. I think 150 is OK," he said.

Other estimates, largely based on body counts or media reports, have held that about 50,000 Iraqi civilians have died in the conflict.

Violence continued Thursday in predominantly Shiite areas of Baghdad when nearly simultaneous car bombs struck two markets, killing at least 16 people.

In northern Baghdad's Qahira district, a car bomb blew up outside shops as noontime shoppers were gathering, said police Lt. Ali Muhsin. He said seven people were killed, 27 were wounded and seven cars were destroyed.

Around the same time, a suicide bomber plowed his explosives-rigged vehicle into crowds gathered in a commercial complex for spare parts, killing at least nine people and wounding 27 in Baghdad's downtown Karradah district, police Col. Abbas Mohammed Salman said.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, meanwhile, told the British Broadcasting Corp. that Saddam Hussein could be executed before the end of the year if an appeals panel upholds his death sentence.

Prosecutors have said Iraq's appeals court is expected to rule by the middle of January on Saddam's guilty verdict and death sentence for the killings of more than 140 Shiite Muslims after an assassination attempt against him in the town of Dujail in 1982.

If the ruling is upheld, Iraqi officials have told The Associated Press, Iraq's three-man presidential council would allow Saddam's hanging. The execution must be carried out within 30 days of the appeals court's decision.

"The way I understand the law that we passed when we were in the National Assembly that the execution of the sentence should happen within a month, one month," al-Maliki said. "I expect it to happen before the end of this year."

Iraqis welcomed Wednesday's announcement of Rumsfeld's resignation as many blamed him for policy failures and scandals that have contributed to the daily sectarian carnage that continues to wrack their nation, more than three years after the U.S. invasion.

"Rumsfeld's resignation shows the scale of the mess the U.S. has made in Iraq," 44-year-old Oil Ministry worker Ibrahim Ali said. "The efforts by American politicians to hide their failure are no longer working."

Hard-line Sunni politician Hamid al-Mutlaq said Rumsfeld's departure was evidence of the downfall of those who engineered the invasion and what he called their "evil project" in Iraq.

A director of Baghdad's main morgue, Dr. Abdul-Razzaq al-Obaidi, said as many as 60 bodies were arriving each day. Many go unclaimed and are buried in a public cemetery after photographs are taken for later identification.

Wow the unashamed equivocating begins in earnest.  I can go back and find all the old posts that state that Iraq is not in a state of civil war, it is not unstable, blah, blah, blah, some even posted by you DA.  NOW you want to talk about the relevant points of the war?  Okay how about how do we stop the violence that is killing 115 Iraqis (at a minimum) per day?  Oh wait that's sectarian violence that has nothing to do with the US and the GWOT, we are only focused on AQI...but according to you we beat AQI, so why can't we just leave now?