He also argues that the least controversial of all the numbers put forward by various groups are those concerning the French soldiers, where government numbers are largely accepted as sound. Most controversial are the numbers of civilians killed. On this subject, he turns to the work of Meynier, who, citing French army documents (not the official number) posits the range of 55,000–60,000 deaths. Meynier further argues that the best number to capture the harkis deaths is 30,000. If we add to this, the number of European civilians, which government figures posit as 2,788.