An alternative calendar: keeping track of the death toll among Italian soldiers

In these past few years, since we started working on the depleted uranium project, we were following a more macabre calendar, which reminded us that there would be no easy and immediate ending to the sacrifices demanded by such an uncaring weapon technology. It is a calendar which finds no consensus between the institutional and the civil society investigations; it is a calendar which is accompanied by a vehement denial of the use of depleted uranium weapons in recent wars. In 2005, the Defence minister Antonio Martino asserted that “our soldiers don’t have any risk with depleted uranium: they don’t use it, and neither do the soldiers of other countries”. In 2009, a manual for the German Army in Afghanistan proved that depleted uranium weapons had been used by the US army although military personnel always provided reassurance that no such weapons were employed.

11 June 2002
44 dead (Parliament special commission)

5 June 2006
41 dead and 300 sick (Italian Defense minister)

18 April 2007
46 dead (Italian Defense minister)

9 October 2007
37 dead and 255 sick (Italian Defense minister)
160 dead and 2536 sick (Osservatorio militare)

29 november 2007:
37 dead and 1655 sick (Italian Defense minister)
164 dead and 2538 sick (Osservatorio militare)

8 July 2008:
166 dead and 2561 sick (Osservatorio militare)

29 June 2009
77 dead and 312 sick (Italian Defense minister)
170 dead and 2500 sick (Osservatorio militare)

4 January 2010
171 dead and 2500 sick (Army Health minister)
216 dead and more than 2500 sick (Associazione Vittime Uranio)