Some 24,000 veterans in the United States commit suicide each year, as opposed to the 8,000 claimed by the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), Gordon Duff, senior editor at Veterans Today claimed during a phone interview with the U.S. Desk.

“The fact that the Department of Veterans Affairs noticed that 8,000 veterans that they’ve heard of died, means that 24,000 actually died,” Duff said on Saturday.

“The Department of Veterans Affairs cleans its computer system about every 3 or 4 months simply removes people from them,” he added.

“I’m a veteran of the Vietnam War and I’ve been taken off the computer system of Veteran Affairs twice in a year, so they don’t have records of veterans. I’m a totally disabled veteran that qualifies for all services, but they just erased me.”

Duff blamed the “soulless” American society as one of the reasons behind the high suicide rate in the United States. “This is a soulless society in the United States.We hate each other to a large extent. We live with manipulated political acrimony. We live with hopelessness. We have no feeling of community.”

The most extensive study yet by the U.S. government on suicide among military veterans shows about 8,000 veterans are killing themselves. That means 22 deaths a day - one every 65 minutes, on average.

The news came two weeks after the U.S. military acknowledged that suicides hit a record in 2012, outpacing combat deaths, with 349 active-duty suicides - almost one a day.