TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

2007 Is Deadliest In Iraq For U.S. Troops

ADVERTISEMENT

By STEVEN R. HURST, The Associated Press

Published: November 7, 2007

BAGHDAD - The U.S. military announced six new deaths Tuesday, making 2007 the bloodiest year for U.S. troops in Iraq despite a recent decline in casualties and a sharp drop in roadside bombings that Washington links to Iran.

With nearly two months left in the year, the annual toll is 853 - three more than the previous worst of 850 in 2004.

But the grim milestone comes as the Pentagon points toward other encouraging signs - growing security in Baghdad and other former militant strongholds that could help consolidate gains against extremists.

A senior Navy officer, meanwhile, announced the planned release of nine Iranian prisoners and was at pains to say that a major cache of Iranian-made weapons and bombs displayed for reporters Tuesday appeared to have been shipped into Iraq before Tehran made a vow to stop the flow of armaments.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said recently that Iran had made such assurances to the Iraqi government.

A decline in Iranian weapons deliveries could be one of several factors for the decrease in Iraqi and American deaths in the past two months.

"It's our best judgment that these particular EFPs ... in recent large cache finds do not appear to have arrived here in Iraq after those pledges were made," Rear Adm. Gregory Smith said.

Among the weapons Washington has accused Iran of supplying to Iraqi Shiite militia fighters are EFPs, or explosively formed projectiles.

They fire a slug of molten metal capable of penetrating even the most heavily armored military vehicles and are more deadly than other roadside bombs.

The No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, said recently there had been a sharp decline in the number of EFPs found in Iraq in the past three months.

At the time, he and Gates said it was too early to tell whether the trend would hold and whether it could be attributed to action by Iranian authorities.

Iran publicly denies that it has sent weapons to Shiite militias in Iraq.

Two of the Iranians to be freed "in the coming days" were among five captured in January during a U.S. raid on an Iranian government facility in Irbil, the capital of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region in the north of the country.

The Americans said the five were members of Iran's elite Quds Force, an arm of the Revolutionary Guards.

Iran said that the five were diplomats working in a facility that was undergoing preparations to be a consular office.

The positive moves toward Iran on Tuesday coincided with the opening of two Iranian consulates, the facility in Irbil that was shut by American forces after the raid, and another in Sulaimaniyah, largest city in the Kurdish zone.

The noticeable drop in U.S. and Iraqi deaths in recent months follows a 30,000-strong U.S. force buildup, along with a six-month cease-fire order by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, among other factors.

There were 39 deaths in October, compared with 65 in September and 84 in August.

Five U.S. soldiers were killed Monday in two separate roadside bomb attacks, said Smith, the military spokesman.

Later, the military said that a sailor had died of wounds suffered in an explosion in Salahuddin province north of Baghdad.

The previous annual record for U.S. military deaths in Iraq, in 2004, coincided with larger, more conventional battles such as the campaign to cleanse Fallujah of Sunni militants and U.S. clashes with Shiite militiamen in the sect's holy city of Najaf.

But the U.S. military in Iraq reached its highest troop levels in Iraq this year - 165,000.

Moreover, the military's decision to send soldiers out of large bases and into Iraqi communities means more troops have seen more "contact with enemy forces" than ever, said Maj. Winfield Danielson, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad.

Also Tuesday, the U.S. military said Iraqi troops discovered 22 bodies in a mass grave northwest of Baghdad over the weekend. The bodies were found during a joint operation Saturday.

It was the second mass grave to be found in the area in less than a month.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT