Despite a drop in United States casualties in the past six months, 2007 has proved the deadliest year for American forces in Iraq since the invasion, with at least 896 soldiers killed, according to an Agence France-Presse tally based on Pentagon figures.
The previous most lethal year for the American military since the US-led invasion of March 2003 was in 2004, when 846 soldiers died.
Since May, when 126 soldiers were killed, casualty figures have been falling month by month with the December toll set to be the lowest since February 2004, when 20 soldiers died in the least deadly month of the war.
The December toll stands at 21, according to the tally, but the number could rise as the US military sometimes takes days to report deaths pending notification of next of kin.
The military reported that a soldier died of non-combat related injuries on Sunday, bringing the total number of American soldiers killed since the invasion to 3 901.
US commanders attribute the high casualty rate in May to the influx of an extra 28 500 troops on the ground as part of a ”surge” ordered in February by US President George Bush.
Since then, they say, the strategy has paid off with the number of attacks across Iraq falling by 60% after peaking in June to levels not seen since before February 2006, when a wave of sectarian violence was unleashed by the bombing of a Shi’ite shrine in the city of Samarra. — AFP
