Contractors “Invisible Casualties” of Iraq War More than 500 civilian contractors have been killed in Iraq since the war started and nearly 5,000 others have been injured, Scripps Howard News Service reported. The report was based on insurance claims filed with the Labor Department by 209 companies. The records do not show how many of the casualties were Americans. Scripps Howard called them “the invisible casualties of the Iraqi occupation.” Contractors account for at least one-sixth of U.S. fatalities, the report said. The Labor Department estimates around 20,000 civilian contractors are working in Iraq, but the exact number is not known. The military increasingly relies on contractors to handle service and support jobs, freeing troops for combat-related missions. Neither the U.S. military nor the employers would identify the casualties, citing privacy concerns. A website run by a private citizen, www.icasualties.org, claims to have identified 261 of the dead contractors. Nearly half of them were Americans. About one-third were security personnel and almost one-fourth were truck drivers. Halliburton told Scripps Howard 82 employees and subcontractors of its KBR subsidiary have died in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait since March 2003. Dyncorp said it has lost 26 employees in Iraq.