Month’s troop deaths highest in two years

BAGHDAD, Iraq – The monthly death toll for U.S. servicemen in Iraq reached a two-year high Friday.

The U.S. military on Friday announced that three Marines assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5 were fatally wounded while fighting insurgents in Anbar province, raising the number of U.S. troop fatalities in December to 107. That is the highest monthly tally since January 2005, the nonprofit Web site icasualties.org reported.

The largest proportion of the U.S. deaths, 47, occurred in Anbar, a western province that is a Sunni Arab insurgent haven. The second-highest number of deaths were in and around the capital.

More than half of troop fatalities so far this month were the result of improvised explosive devices, the Web site reported. The rest of the troops were killed by gunfire, mortar rounds, rocket-propelled grenades and vehicle accidents, including a helicopter crash. Two servicemen died from illnesses.

The Marine deaths reported Friday raised the total number of U.S. military fatalities in Iraq since 2003 to 2,996, icasulties.org said.

The yearly total of 816 as of this morning is on course to be slightly lower than last year’s 846 U.S. fatalities.

The number of U.S. wounded also declined this year, from 5,947 in 2005 to 5,676 so far this year.

U.S. military officials also announced that they released the last two of five Iranian nationals they had detained in raids Dec. 20 and 21 in Baghdad’s central Jadriya neighborhood, Iraqi officials said.

The two Iranians were detained at the office of Hadi al-Amiri, leader of the Badr Organization, a Shiite militia, the officials said. The office was located within the compound of Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, which is affiliated with the Badr militia.