In two reports on injuries, both accidental and deliberate, the United Nations agency said they killed more than five million people in 2000, one tenth of the global death toll.

Nearly 90 percent of injury-related deaths took place in poorer countries.

Road deaths, totaling 1.26 million, claimed the highest number of victims, followed by suicide at 815,000 and interpersonal violence at 520,000.

Wars and conflict ranked sixth -- between poisoning and falls -- with 310,000 deaths.

WHO said age, sex, geographical region and income level all played a part in the distribution and incidence of fatal injuries.

Such fatalities were twice as prevalent among men as women, the reports said. Three times as many men, for example, died in road traffic accidents as women. And men were also three times as likely to be murdered.

Death rates from road accidents, burns and drowning were particularly high in Africa and Asia, and homicides were three times as frequent as suicides in Africa and the Americas.

But in Europe and southeast Asia suicide rates were more than double murder rates.

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