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2007 Toll A Record For U.S. In Iraq
U.S. soldiers prepare to search an auto yard in Mosul, northern Iraq. Troop casualties have declined sharply since early summer, officials said.
(By Maya Alleruzzo -- Associated Press)
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In June, Burton's unit was seeing up to 600 violent events a day and more than 50 U.S. soldiers killed or wounded every month. Now the numbers are dramatically lower.
"Our last combat-related death -- knock on wood -- was in September," Burton said.
Across Baghdad, the number of American troops killed has plummeted from 58 in both May and June to 14 last month, according to Ollivant, the chief of plans for the U.S. military in the capital. "It looks like the beginning of a long-term trend to us, and we are, as we always say, cautiously optimistic," he said.
"We suspected we were going to have to pay a price up front as the cost of implementing" the counterinsurgency strategy, Ollivant said. "That is regrettable, and we miss every one we lost. But from where we sit now, it looks like those sacrifices have paid off."
At a news conference in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone, Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith said the violence would be far worse were it not for U.S. troops' success in discovering stockpiles of weapons.
"Simply put, it's the fuel that drives the insurgency that has led to the death and destruction witnessed here in Iraq for the past several years," said Smith, a U.S. military spokesman. Because of the troop increase this year, the number of weapons caches discovered has more than doubled, from 2,667 in all of 2006 to 5,364 so far this year, Smith said.
In other indicators of a decline in violence, Smith said, mortar and rocket attacks across Iraq have decreased from more than 1,000 a month in May and June to fewer than 400 in October, and the number of roadside bombs has tumbled from about 65 a day in the fall of 2006 to less than 30 a day now.
Meanwhile, violence against Iraqis continued across the country.
A mass grave containing 22 bodies in the Lake Tharthar region of Anbar province was discovered over the weekend by Iraqi soldiers, the military said.
Near Samarra, a suicide bomber driving a car filled with explosives blew up near a police commando checkpoint, killing five policemen and one civilian, police Lt. Haidar Kadhim said. Twelve other people were wounded.
And in Mosul, a member of the governing council, Aref Youssif al-Shabki, was assassinated, an Interior Ministry official said. Three of his bodyguards were also seriously wounded.
Staff writer Josh White and staff researcher Robert E. Thomason in Washington, correspondent Sudarsan Raghavan in Madrid and other Washington Post staff in Iraq contributed to this report.
