COUNTERING MILITARY RECRUITMENT
Articles: Military Service: Casualties
2007 Is Deadliest Year for U.S. Troops in Iraq
DAMIEN CAVE, The New York Times
November 7, 2007
BAGHDAD,
Nov. 6 — Six American soldiers were killed in three separate
attacks Monday, the military said Tuesday, taking the number of deaths
this year to 852 and making 2007 the deadliest year of the war for
United States troops.
Military officials announced the discovery of a mass grave holding 22
bodies in a rural area north of Falluja. It also said that nine
Iranians being held in Iraq would soon be released, including two
detained during a January raid of a consulate office in Erbil.
Five of the American soldiers died in two roadside bomb attacks on
Monday near Kirkuk, said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, director of the
communications division of the Multinational Force-Iraq, the formal
name for the United States-led forces.
A sixth soldier died Monday during combat operations in Anbar Province, according to a military statement.
The deaths come only a few days after the military announced a steep
drop in the rate of American deaths this year. In October, 38 American
service members died in Iraq, the third-lowest monthly tally since
2003, according to Iraq Casualty Count, a Web site that tracks military
deaths. November’s total, if the current pace continues, would be
higher but still far below the war’s average of 69 American
military deaths per month.
Despite the decline, American commanders acknowledged that 2007 would
be far deadlier than the second-worst year, 2004, when 849 Americans
died, many of them in major battles for control of insurgent
strongholds like Falluja.
Military officials attribute the rise this year to an expanded troop
presence during the so-called surge, which brought more than 165,000
troops to Iraq, and sent units out of large bases and into more
dangerous communities.
Commanders maintain that despite the high cost in terms of lives lost,
the strategy has brought improved security to the country and
“tactical momentum” that could stabilize Iraq permanently.
The potential release of the Iranians may reflect American approval of
some signs that Iran is cooperating with their demand that it stanch
the flow of materials into Iraq used to make deadly roadside bombs
known as explosively formed projectiles, or E.F.P.’s.
Admiral Smith said that the E.F.P. components found recently during
raids “do not appear to have arrived here in Iraq after those
pledges were made,” suggesting that Iran has limited trafficking
the weapon parts across the border after promising to do so.
American commanders have stopped short of declaring that Iran has in
fact complied with the United States’ demands, and Admiral Smith
on Tuesday described the plan to release nine Iranian prisoners not as
a diplomatic reward but rather as the perfunctory end to a criminal
investigation.
“These individuals have no continuing value, nor do they pose a further threat to Iraqi security,” he said.
Admiral Smith did not say why the two Iranians captured in January at
an Iranian consulate office in Erbil were held for nine months, after
Iran insisted that they were harmless government workers.
But Iraqi officials welcomed the announcement. Mohammed Al Haj Hamud,
Iraq’s deputy foreign minister, said the release would
“improve the relations between the three countries” of
Iraq, Iran and the United States before another round of planned
meetings on security. “We want good relations with Iran and for
Iran to avoid conducting any actions inside Iraq,” he said.
“A the same time, the Iraqi government is keen to maintain its
relationship with its first and strongest ally, the United States of
America.
Meanwhile, violence against Iraqis continued. The mass grave was found
Saturday during a joint American-Iraqi operation in the Lake Tharthar
area, a desolate rural area near the site of another grave, holding 25
bodies, that was found less than a month ago.
Local police officials said the bodies were dumped in and around an abandoned building.
“Some were buried in wells and some were left in rooms used as
prisons,” said a police officer who helped clear the grave.
“These corpses are part of what we expect to find more of in the
future.”
Just south of Kirkuk, the police said that clashes with Iraqi and
American forces on Tuesday left four gunmen dead. In a separate
incident, gunmen attacked and killed the mayor of small village about
30 miles south of Kirkuk, and wounded his son, as they drove to a
neighboring town.
A member of the governing council in Mosul was also assassinated in a
neighborhood on the city’s outskirts, the authorities said, and
six policemen died when they were ambushed while driving to work.
And in Baghdad, the police found four dead bodies, two east of the
Tigris River, two to the west. A roadside bomb exploded near an
American patrol near Zawra park in western Baghdad, and a second bomb
exploded in the central Baghdad neighborhood of Karrada, an interior
ministry official said. He said it was unclear if there were any
casualties.
South of the capital, in Latafiya, a bomb targeting a joint
Iraqi-American foot patrol killed one Iraqi soldier. North of Hilla,
the authorities found the body of a man in his 20s floating in a small
river. He had been stabbed to death.
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