BAGHDAD, April 9 (Reuters) - Following are key facts and figures on the state of Iraq, five years after U.S. troops entered Baghdad and toppled Saddam Hussein. VIOLENCE * Anywhere between 90,000 and 1 million Iraqi civilians have been killed since the U.S.-led invasion, according to various estimates. Over 4,000 U.S. soldiers have died and tens of thousands have been wounded. * The Sunni Arab insurgency has waned over the past year as some Sunni tribal leaders and insurgents have taken up arms against al Qaeda. But despite being driven from Baghdad and western Anbar province, al Qaeda militants have regrouped in the north and stage large-scale suicide bombings. * Clashes between Shi'ite factions have risen, with government troops fighting with cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia in Baghdad and southern Iraq over the past month. * The U.S commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, told Congress on Tuesday that levels of violence and civilian deaths had fallen substantially since September, but that these gains were "fragile and reversible". ECONOMY * The International Monetary Fund expects Iraq's gross domestic product to rise to over 7 percent this year, from just 1.3 percent in 2007, due to higher oil output. But unemployment is high and inward investment sparse. The United Nations estimates 4 million Iraqis are struggling to feed themselves while 40 percent of the 27-million population has no safe water. * Iraq's national power grid, devastated by years of war and sanctions, leaves millions in the dark. The country has the world's third largest reserves of oil, but motorists sometimes queue at petrol stations for hours. Oil output has only in recent months returned to pre-war levels of close to 2.5 million barrels per day. * There is still no agreement on an oil law to lay a legal framework for foreign companies to operate in Iraq and determine how revenues from vast oil reserves are shared. POLITICS * After months of deadlock, and under U.S. pressure, Iraqi political parties passed a series of laws earlier this year that are viewed as important for national reconciliation, but progress has proven fleeting and tenuous. * Iraq is due to hold provincial elections later this year that Washington hopes will increase the involvement of Sunni Arabs, who boycotted the last local polls in 2005, in the political process. But there are signs the elections could intensify the struggle for power between rival Shi'ite factions in Iraq's oil-rich south and trigger a new wave of violence. * It is not entirely clear how a law relaxing restrictions on former members of Saddam's Baath Party holding public office will be implemented. COST * The war has cost the United States Treasury $500 billion, but some experts believe the long-term bill will be far higher. Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has estimated the war could end up costing $3 trillion when combat, health and other long-term costs are factored in. REFUGEES * Iraq has been hard-hit by a brain-drain that has robbed it of much-needed doctors, engineers, scientists and other skilled professionals. The Iraqi doctors' syndicate says up to 70 percent of specialist doctors have fled abroad. * Roughly 2 million people are estimated to have left the country. The United Nations says only 36,000 people have returned since security improved. There are also around 2 million people displaced internally. (Compiled by Noah Barkin)
A protester is evicted from a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing with US Commander in Iraq General David Petraeus and Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker, on Capitol Hill in Washington, April ...
