Insurgents Rely On Homemade Bombs
A U.S. Army soldier was killed by a roadside bomb in central Iraq, the military said Tuesday, raising to at least 93 the number of American service members who died during October, the fourth deadliest month for the troops in the Iraq war.
The soldier, whose name was not released, was killed Monday when a bomb exploded near his foot patrol in Haswah, 30 miles south of Baghdad, the military said. The soldier was the seventh American service member killed Monday in three separate attacks in Iraq.
All were victims of homemade bombs, which the military refers to as "improvised explosive devices," or IEDs.
The deaths raised to at least 2,026 the number of members of the U.S. military who have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
The U.S. military death toll for October is now at least 93, the highest monthly total since January, when 106 American service members died — more than 30 of them in a helicopter crash that was ruled an accident.
Only during two other months since the war began has the U.S. military seen a higher toll: in November 2004, when 137 Americans died, and in April 2004, when 135 died.
In other developments:
In the latest attacks, two IEDs exploded on Tuesday, one in Baghdad and one south of the capital, killing an Iraqi police officer and wounding three other people, officials said. A suicide attacker in Kirkuk detonated explosives hidden beneath his clothes, wounding the city's police commander, Col. Khatab Rash, and his driver, police said.
On Tuesday, the U.S. command also issued a report showing its efforts to combat the threat from IEDs, which have emerged as the deadliest weapon in the insurgent arsenal. The report, summarizing combat operations around Baghdad over a five-day period, said U.S. forces had found several powerful roadside bombs hidden in two vehicles on Saturday.
The day before, soldiers caught three suspected insurgents planting a bomb on the side of a street and defused it. On Thursday, soldiers chased three Iraqi men into a nearby home after a bombing and found bomb-making materials, the military said.
Bombs have also taken a heavy toll on Iraqis.
On Monday, a powerful roadside bomb exploded among civilians in Basra, Iraq's second-largest city and the major metropolis of the Shiite-dominated south, which has witnessed less violence than Sunni areas. On Tuesday, Basra police raised the casualty figure to 20 dead and 71 wounded. The attack occurred along a bustling street packed with shops and restaurants as people were enjoying an evening out after the daily Ramadan fast.
Military commanders have warned that Sunni insurgents will step up their attacks in the run-up to the Dec. 15 election, when Iraqis will choose their first full-term parliament since the collapse of Saddam Hussein's regime in 2003.
To guard against such attacks, the military has raised the number of American troops in Iraq to 157,000 — among the highest levels of the Iraq conflict.
Most of the combat deaths and injuries in recent months have been a result of the increasing use by insurgents of sophisticated homemade bombs, or IEDs.
Last Friday, an IED killed Col. William W. Wood, 44, of Panama City, Fla., an infantry battalion commander. He was promoted posthumously, making him the highest-ranking soldier killed in action in the Iraq conflict, according to the Pentagon.
"We see an adversary that continues to develop some sophistication on very deadly and increasingly precise stand-off type weapons — IEDs, in particular," Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita told reporters Monday.
The insurgents continually search for new and more effective ways to use IEDs, Di Rita said, while U.S. forces look for new ways to counter the threat.
"We're getting more intelligence that's allowing us to stop more of these things, find more of them. So we're learning from them and the enemy is learning from us, and it's going to be that way for as long as there is an insurgency," Di Rita said.