BAGHDAD, April 30, 2008
U.S. Death Toll In Iraq Hits 7-Month High
GIs Killed In Latest Attacks Pushes April Total To 47; U.S. Troops Ambushed In Sadr City
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Firefighters and residents search through the rubble of a destroyed house in the Shiite stronghold of Sadr City in Baghdad on Tuesday, April 29, 2008. (AP Photo/Karim Kadim)
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One soldier died when his vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb. The other died of wounds sustained when he was attacked by small-arms fire, the military said Wednesday. Both incidents occurred Tuesday in northwestern Baghdad.
A third soldier died in a roadside bombing Tuesday night in the east of the capital, the military said.
The statement did not give a more specific location. But the eastern half of Baghdad includes embattled Sadr City and other neighborhoods that have been the focus of intense combat between Shiite militants and U.S.-Iraqi troops for more than a month.
In all, at least 4,059 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
"We have said all along that this will be a tough fight and there will be periods where we see these extremists, these criminal groups and al Qaeda terrorists seek to reassert themselves," U.S. military spokesman Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner told reporters in Baghdad.
"So, the sacrifice of our troopers, the sacrifice of Iraqi forces and Iraqi citizens reflects this challenge," Bergner said in response to a question about what's behind the increase in American troop deaths.
The latest fighting erupted at the end of March after Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki launched a crackdown against Shiite militias in the southern port city of Basra. But it quickly spread to Baghdad's Sadr City, a sprawling slum with about 2.5 million people that is a stronghold of the Mahdi Army militia of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
The militiamen have used the district as a base to fire barrages of missiles and mortar rounds at the U.S.-protected Green Zone which houses much of the Iraqi government and Western diplomatic missions, including the U.S. and British embassies.
They also have fought running street battles in which hundreds have died. The U.S. military says those killed have been mainly gunmen. But police and medical authorities in Sadr City say innocent civilians have frequently gotten caught up in the fighting.
Such street battles - in tight confines and amid frightened civilians - are increasingly becoming a hallmark of the drive into Sadr City and recall the type of head-on clashes last seen in large numbers during last year's U.S. troop buildup in Baghdad and surrounding areas.
Tahseen al-Sheikhly, the spokesman for the civilian side of Baghdad security operations, said Wednesday that a total of 925 people had died and 2,605 were wounded in Sadr City. But he gave no timeframe or details about how the figure was reached.
Previous Interior Ministry casualty figures for the past month had indicated that less than 400 people had perished. It was not immediately possible to reconcile the conflicting figures. Officials at the Baghdad military operations center said they could not confirm al-Sheikhly's count.
The Sadr City violence continued overnight with the destruction of a school in the district. AP Television News footage showed that parts of the two-floor Baghdad Girls' School had pancaked as the result of an explosion. Desks were hanging down from the slanting classrooms where the outer walls were blown out by the blast.
Local officials said the school was the target of an airstrike on Tuesday evening.
An official at the local hospital, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to release the information, said two people were killed and 16 wounded overnight in Sadr City. He said this brought the death toll in the district since Tuesday to 31, with 107 wounded.
The U.S. military had no comment about the school but said an Abrams tank fired a 120 mm shell at gunmen shooting at U.S. troops in Sadr City, killing all three. In another part of Sadr City, an unmanned drone fired a missile at a group of men planting a roadside bomb and killed one, the military said.
On Wednesday, al-Maliki accused the Mahdi Army of using civilians as human shields, and vowed to continue the crackdown against militias.
"We can't build a state along with militias," he told reporters at a news conference. "We want to build a single national army."
Al-Maliki said gunmen had killed the nephew of police Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, an Interior Ministry spokesman who had also overseen operations in Basra, by hanging him from an electricity pole in Sadr City.
In Other Developments:
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Add a Comment See all 79 Comments
- I want to know who voted for this tyrant Bush to be re-elected into office? I certainly didn''t, not even the first time. Didn''t we already know by the second go-around that this war was about nothing more than Bush''s ego? If this war was for oil, then once again, it is a catastrophic failure, not to mentioned being sold to the public as a measure of our safety, just to announce at the beginning that we were ''freeing the Iraqui people.''
- Reply to this comment
- What happened to "Mission Accomplished"? I thought we won?? I thought we were greeted as liberators and saved the world from stockpiles of WMD? Well, at least oil is cheap. Bwaaaaaah!
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Posted by EddyNewHope at 11:09 PM : Apr 30, 2008
-I agree. Where is the discounted oil we are to receive from ''saving Iraq?'' Whatever happened to, ''Iraqui oil will pay our costs for saving their country?'' - Reply to this comment
- Talk all the cr#p you want people.At the end of the day Iraq is still Vietnam all over again..........Saigon II The Trilogy.....Lookin familiar Veit Vets ?We never lean.
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Posted by labombaOH at 01:31 AM : May 01, 2008
- I completely disagree. This will not be another VietNam. The American public supports our troops, even though we all know we were duped by Bush and his decision to create this unnecessary war. If anyone disrespects a service member for being at an unjust war they were ordered to participate in, then shame on them.
If they really thought there were WMDs as they sold us so much ''proof'' of, then I could agree this conflict was necessary. However, 6 years later, having ''control'' of the country, with no sign of WMDs discovered, we should have been out of there years ago.
I think this is why Colin Powell, one of the greatest military leaders in our history, resigned. He knew better, and was forced to ''prove'' our reasons for being there, against his conscious and will. - Reply to this comment
- "Mission Accomplished",.....year 5.....
Somebody get a rope.... - Reply to this comment
- veteran72 wrote:
"But,...but,....Bill got a BJ,......*sniff*....."
Hmmmmm - I wonder why GW Bush kept inviting Ted Haggard to the White House? - Reply to this comment
- Hahahahaha - And Bill got IMPEACHED for that BJ. That''s incredible! He got impeached and these fug-tards are giving out "medals of freedom"! Now you have to be kinda dumb to get a BJ in the White House from a tubby, mediocre looking intern but I don''t think that compares to manipulating intelligence to start a war under false pretense.
- Reply to this comment
- But,...but,....Bill got a BJ,......*sniff*.....
- Reply to this comment
- Why is this not front page? who cares about rev wright and flag pins and such? this is what we need to talk about. news media outlets have rev wright on every 10 minutes and newspapers have him in every other article yet we cant tell the world we just had the most deaths in the last 7 months in iraq? im beyond the point of pissedofftivity
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- xiazner - Congress voted to allow Bush to invade Iraq based on false intelligence that was cherry picked and groomed by Cheney and Rumsfield and their cronies. Bush and Cheney own the Iraq war and no smoke screen will ever distort that fact. History will judge these liars and traitors as they should: Treasonous War Criminals who sank the pride and honor of our great nation to new lows, ran up the highest national debt in our history, and then sold out our kid''s future to Exxon, Chevron, Enron, Halliburton, Blackwater and their like. No mercy should be shown these vacant souls.
- Reply to this comment
- What happened to "Mission Accomplished"? I thought we won?? I thought we were greeted as liberators and saved the world from stockpiles of WMD? Well, at least oil is cheap. Bwaaaaaah!
- Reply to this comment
- Ok I just got home. So let''s see...people are saying it''s ALL bushes fault...and that this war is based on lies...etc.etc...
Number 1: Nearly half the things Bush can do (if not ALL) is processed through CONGRESS. Note that if you''re going to be mad at someone, blame BOTH of them.
Number 2: Do we know these are lies? How do we know WHAT is really going on? This is the press people, they can do d4mn well what they want, and can pretty much put in anything they want in their reports. Listen to the experts such as General Patreus (forgive me if I misspelled his name).
Number 3: I declare cookies! Free bunnies for all! Except for the idiots...which is a lot of people here... - Reply to this comment
- "I believe that our casualty rates now are much lower than they were in Vietnam, in the World Wars, and at more than half of the battles of the Civil War." - xiazner
Apples to oranges!
Those wars had defined objectives and possibly even good reasons. This war (the "War on Terra") is a war of greed, based on lies, and is scheduled to last FOREVER (if the repugs get their way).
Furthermore, the true body count is in the millions! But we don''t count the human beings we murder; we only count "our own".
However, we don''t even count our own casualties correctly. Anything that happens after discharge is not counted. So, we don''t count the vast number of casualties due to PTSD-- you know, the cr@zy ones who who, after one day escaping the stop-loss hell and returning to the states, will then murder their wives and gfs, children, coworkers, etc. - Reply to this comment
- Let''s demand the Bush twins go to Iraq. You know, for the good of the country to fight their daddy''s nightmare
of a war. - Reply to this comment
- Normally I can post something worth saying but this bush/cheney disaster is so bad I can barely type. What were you republican idiots thinking when you elected these monsters? God bless the US military. What would we do without you all.
- Reply to this comment
- As long as the flow of $120/barrel oil continues, who cares how many die?
Now pardon me while I gas up my Hummer and stick another yellow ribbon magnet on it. - Reply to this comment
- Surge? More like one big, expensive *******!
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- What''s the difference between Bin Laden and George W Bush?
1059 Dead Americans.
Bush wins the body count hands down!
Heckuva job, Liar-in-Chief! - Reply to this comment
- What''s the difference between John Wayne Gacy and George Walker Bush?
4030 American victims!
Heckuva job, Liar-in-Chief! - Reply to this comment
- IRLiberal wrote:
"But but but... I thought the surge worked!! Hey everyone says it worked? I mean Rush said it worked. Bush said it worked. Petraeus said it worked. All the little neocon minions said it worked."
If you follow the timeline (and not the lies of Petraeus and the Republicanazis), the decline in the number of US deaths in Iraq matches up with the beginning of the truce with Muqtada al-Sadr last year.
When Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki began the crackdown on militias, the deaths of US servicemen began to rise again.
While I have no doubt that the surge is responsible for helping to save some US lives, it was only ever going to be a temporary thing anyway. - Reply to this comment
- Ah,, I got it now... The 5th Anniversary is wood -- Let''s march on the White House & the GOP headquarters with baseball bats
- Reply to this comment
Best-selling author Mitch Albom on his first nonfiction work since "Tuesdays with Morrie."
