A major international relief organization has concluded that 1.7 million people have died during the past two years as a result of war in the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. According to The International Rescue Committee (IRC) 200,000 of those the deaths were the result of violence. The vast majority of deaths were caused by the war's destruction of the country's health infrastructure and food supplies.

How is it possible to go into the heart of a war zone and tally up the casualties? The IRC hired American Les Roberts, an epidemiologist who teaches at Johns Hopkins University, to map out an area of eastern Congo, go door-to-door, and ask families who among their relatives had died during the war and why. Roberts and his team of Congolese researchers interviewed members of 1,011 households. They primarily interviewed mothers on the assumption that mothers would have the most detailed knowledge of the health histories of their children.

This is a look at the IRC's census of the dead, through the researchers' eyes and those of the war's victims.