More than one million Iraqis have died as a result of the conflict started by the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, according to a new survey by a UK polling group.

The report was followed by more violence on Thursday, with five people killed and eight injured in a bomb blast in the Kazimiyah neighborhood of Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.

The survey, conducted by UK-based Opinion Research Business (ORB), found that 20 per cent of people in Iraq had experienced at least one death in their household as a result of the conflict, rather than natural causes.

The survey consisted of face-to-face interviews with 2,414 adults.

The last complete census in Iraq conducted in 1997 found 4.05 million households in the country, a figure ORB used to calculate that approximately 1.03 million people had died as a result of the war.

The margin of error in the survey, conducted in August and September 2007, was 1.7 per cent, giving a range of deaths from 946,258 to 1.12 million people. The research covered 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces.

Those missing from the survey included two of Iraq's more dangerous regions, Kerbala and Anbar, and the northern province of Arbil, where local authorities refused the group a permit to work.

Tallys of civilians killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion have been controversial in the past.

The Iraq Body Count website estimates the number is under one million, but upwards of between 80,699 and 88,126 people, although US authorities have questioned the site's methodology and figures.

Baghdad blast

Those people killed and injured in Thursday's car bomb attack in Baghdad were passers-by in the street or in three cars that were damaged as they drove past the explosion, the Reuters news agency reported.

An Iraqi police officer, said the car was parked about 300 metres from a bus station but it exploded early in the day before passengers had started to arrive.

In another attack in Iraq, rockets slammed into a British base in Basra, in southern Iraq, killing at least 10 Iraqis outside the base and wounding three British soldiers.

Captain Finn Aldrich, a British military spokesman in Basra, said no major damage was reported on the base, but one of the rockets landed outside the entry gates for Iraqi civilian employees.

British troops retaliated, firing six artillery shells towards the launching points, Aldrich said.

Major Rafea al-Ajwadi, a Basra police chief, said the British artillery fire had hit a construction company, killing one employee and wounding five others.

Aldrich said joint British-Iraqi investigation was under way to determine whether the casualties found at the site of the artillery strikes were civilians or fighters, as well as other details about the attack.

PHOTO CAPTION

Scene of Baghdad animal market blast (01/02/08)