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The War Profiteers - War Crimes,
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October 16th, 2006 - 5 Americans
Killed in Iraq, Bringing Month’s Toll to 53 |
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5 Americans Killed in Iraq,
Bringing Month’s Toll to 53 By Kirk Semple New York Times October 16, 2006 Baghdad - Two marines were
killed by insurgents in Anbar Province on Sunday, the American military command
said, and three American soldiers died a day earlier in a bombing in southern
Baghdad, bringing the total of American troop deaths in Iraq this month to at
least 53, an extraordinarily high midmonth tally. At the current rate of
American troop deaths, almost four a day, October is on track to be the
third-deadliest month of the entire conflict for the military, according to
Iraq Coalition Casualty Count, an independent Web site that tracks
war-related casualties. The two most deadly months coincided with major
American offensives against entrenched guerrilla fighters. The rise now, in spite of
improvements in body and vehicle armor, followed a decision by commanders to
increase the number of American troops patrolling Baghdad in an effort to
quell the sectarian violence that has engulfed the city. Attacks continued against
government and civilian targets as well on Sunday. A series of seven bombings
within a few hours struck in the northern city of Kirkuk, killing at least 17
people and wounding at least 73, according to police officials. Just last year, commanders
began cutting back on American patrols in Baghdad in an effort to give Iraqi
forces more responsibility. But the escalating violence forced them to
reverse the strategy in late July, and thousands of American troops were
shifted to Baghdad. Plans for a major troop withdrawal from the country by
the end of the year were canceled. A cornerstone of the new
approach has been house-to-house sweeps of the capital’s most troubled areas,
intended to ferret out militia networks, fighters and armaments. To date, the
Americans, with Iraqi assistance, have swept eight districts. Simultaneously, the American
and Iraqi militaries have more aggressively pursued Shiite death squads,
including elements of the Mahdi Army, the militia that loosely answers to the
cleric Moktada al-Sadr. Since the neighborhood
sweeps started at the beginning of August, guerrilla attacks - against military
and civilian targets alike - have risen about 23 percent across the capital,
according to American military statistics. Maj. Gen. William B.
Caldwell IV, a senior military spokesman here, directly attributed the rise
in American deaths to the new security strategy. “We are out more
aggressively engaged in the city at this point than we were just a month
ago,” he said at a news conference last Thursday. “Coalition forces are being
much more active in going out and looking for these folks, these death squads
and elements that are associated with the sectarian violence.” According to Iraq Coalition
Casualty Count, which collates statistics distributed in Pentagon news
releases, the number of American deaths in Baghdad has sharply increased
since the American-led crackdown began in early August. That month, 20 American
forces died in or near the capital, up from 12 in July and 15 in June. The
number rose again last month, to 29. The number of troops wounded
in action, a figure that usually parallels the number of fatalities, has also
increased drastically. From Sept. 28 to Oct. 11, 427 American troops were
wounded, one of the worst two-week stretches of the war, according to Iraq
Coalition Casualty Count. In all of September, 776 troops were wounded, the
fourth-highest monthly total since the American invasion, according to the
Web site. As fighting has risen to new
levels in Baghdad, the capital, it has also continued unabated in Anbar
Province, the stronghold of the Sunni Arab insurgency. At least 21 Americans
have died there this month, and 60 over the past two months. At the same
time, forces in the region have been stretched as more troops have been sent
to Baghdad. The deadliest months for
American troops since the beginning of the war have been associated with
major offensives. Some 137 American troops
died in November 2004, the same month as the second siege of Falluja, where
the Americans battled Sunni Arab rebels. In April 2004, a bloody month with
the first siege of Falluja and pitched battles between the Americans and Mr.
Sadr’s militia in Najaf, 135 American troops died. In contrast, the military
has not conducted any major operations this month. The military has not
initiated a new urban cordon-and-search operation for more than two weeks and
has instead focused on patrolling the areas already swept, officials say. In the multiple car bombings
in Kirkuk, a city bitterly contested by several ethnic and religious groups,
three suicide car bombers, including one driving a van packed with chickens
and explosives, detonated their payloads throughout the city, killing 13
people and wounding at least 34, according to Maj. Gen. Turhan Yusuf, chief
of the Kirkuk Police Department. One blew himself up near a girls’ academy,
killing two students. Four other bombs, including
two unattended car bombs, killed four civilians and wounded at least 19
others, police officials said. Most of the bombs were apparently directed at
Iraqi security forces. In Baghdad on Sunday, the
authorities recovered at least 30 bodies dumped around the city, an Interior
Ministry official said. Two bombs exploded near the
convoy of the chief of financial affairs for the Interior Ministry, killing
seven people, though the administrator escaped unscathed, the ministry
official said. Another bomb exploded in the Amel neighborhood in Baghdad,
killing one civilian and wounding two others, the official said. In Tal Afar, near Mosul, a
suicide bomber wrapped in explosives walked into a local market and detonated
himself near a police checkpoint, killing a child and wounding five other
people, including two police officers, hospital and police officials said. In Mosul, five members of a
family were killed when gunmen burst into their home and opened fire,
officials said, and gunmen assassinated Raad al-Haiali, a provincial official
and a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni Arab group. The tribunal trying Saddam
Hussein and his associates said Sunday that it was postponing the date for
verdicts from Monday, as originally planned, to Nov. 5, according to a senior
court official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak
publicly on the issue. Other court officials have
said in recent days that a major reason for the delay is that after nine
months of hearings, the five judges in the case have failed to reach
agreement on a sentence for Mr. Hussein and appeared to be undecided between
a death sentence for him or a penalty of life imprisonment. Mr. Hussein, 68, faces a
possible sentence of death by hanging for his role in the execution of 148
men and boys from the mostly Shiite town of Dujail after an assassination
attempt against him in 1982. John F. Burns and Khalid
al-Ansary contributed reporting from Baghdad, and Iraqi employees of The New
York Times from Kirkuk and Mosul. External link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/16/world/middleeast/16iraq.html |