Ga.-Based Army Unit to Serve Third Tour

A British soldier patrols in Zubair, near Basra, Iraq's second-largest city, 550 kilometers (340 miles) southeast of Baghdad, Iraq, Friday, Nov. 17, 2006. British ground forces and U.S. military helicopters fought with gunmen Friday in southern Iraq where four American security contractors and their Austrian co-worker were abducted in a convoy hijacking. (AP Photo/Nabil Al Jurani) (Nabil Al Jurani - AP)

Also, about 1,500 soldiers from the South Carolina Army National Guard's 218th Brigade Combat Team have been told they will deploy to Afghanistan early next year to help train the Afghan army, Whitman said.

The Pentagon also announced Friday that a soldier killed in Baghdad on Tuesday was an Army colonel _ the first of that rank to be killed since the war began in March 2003. He was identified as Thomas H. Felts, Sr., of Sandston, Va. William W. Wood, 44, who was killed in Iraq in October 2005, had been approved for promotion to colonel, but at the time of his death he was a lieutenant colonel.

Felts, 45, was assigned to the Command and General Staff College at the School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., and was in Baghdad as leader of a team advising the Iraqi army. He died of injuries suffered from a roadside bomb, along with Army Spc. Justin R. Garcia, 26, of Elmhurst, N.Y.

Relatively few U.S. military advisers have been killed in Iraq, although they may face greater dangers if the Pentagon follows through on a plan to expand the number of advisers working alongside Iraqi soldiers and police.

A Marine commander said Friday that he has already begun expanding adviser teams in his area of Iraq's western Anbar province.

Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon by videoconference from his headquarters in Fallujah, Col. Lawrence D. Nicholson said the teams have been doubled in size and he has proposed doubling them yet again.

"We think that is clearly the way ahead," he said, adding that the Iraqis have proven themselves to be good "mimics," emulating the tactics and procedures used by the Americans to be more effective against insurgents.

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Associated Press Writer Lolita Baldor contributed to this report.