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US death toll in Iraq
nears 1,000 as seven more die
The Independent, Patrick Cockburn in
Baghdad
07 September 2004
A car bomb killed seven US Marines and three Iraqi soldiers
outside the city of Fallujah yesterday, bringing the total
number of American dead since the US invasion of Iraq in March
last year close to 1,000.
An apparent suicide bomber blew himself up nine miles north of
Fallujah, which has been controlled by Iraqi insurgents for
the past six months, destroying two Humvee vehicles. The force
of the explosion hurled the engine "a good distance" from the
blast site, a military official said.
Four Iraqis were wounded when soldiers fired from the site of
the bombing.
The deaths of the Marines from the 1st Marine Expeditionary
Force brings the death toll for members of the US military in
Iraq since March 2003 to 985, the US Defence Department says.
Some 7,000 US soldiers have been wounded in Iraq over the same
period.
The attack may bring closer the day when the US army seeks to
recapture Fallujah, 30 miles west of Baghdad, which has been a
capital for insurgents since American forces failed to
recapture it after a bloody three-week siege last April.
The US army and Marines lost 66 dead and 1,100 injured in
August after fierce fighting against Shia fighters in Najaf as
well as in the continuing war with Sunni guerrillas further
north. Many severely wounded US soldiers, who would have died
from injuries such as the loss of all their limbs in the
Korean or Vietnam wars, now survive because of improved
medical treatment.
The suicide bombing campaign has hitherto been directed
primarily against the Iraqi police and army, not against US
targets. If suicide bombers start to target the largely
road-bound US soldiers their patrols and convoys will be
extremely vulnerable.
The interim Iraqi government also suffered a blow to its
credibility when it was forced to admit that it had not,
contrary to claims on Saturday, captured Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri,
a senior lieutenant of Saddam Hussein.
Two senior government officials had given convincing details
of his detention. One said that Izzat Ibrahim, who suffers
from leukaemia, had been caught in a clinic near Tikrit.
Another said 50 of his supporters had been killed and 80
captured when they sought to rescue him.
General Babaker Zebari, the Iraqi army commander, confirmed
the story on Sunday, although later in the day the Defence
Minister, Hazim Shalaan, weighed in to say the report was
baseless.
The government said yesterday that it had arrested a relative
of Izzat Ibrahim, who was wanted but was not a member of
Saddam's regime. It has said nothing about the 50 people
supposedly killed by the security forces.
The confusion shows the lack of co-ordination in the
government and the difficulty it has in finding out what is
happening outside Baghdad. In August the Interior Ministry
falsely claimed that its police had entered the shrine in
Najaf and arrested 400 members of the Mehdi Army.
Iyad Allawi, the Prime Minister, is moving closer to the
information policies of the old regime by closing down
operations of al-Jazeera, the widely-watched Arab satellite
channel. Its offices in the Swan Lake hotel in Baghdad were
firmly shut yesterday with blue-shirted policemen guarding the
door and milling about in the lobby. The channel is popular,
although seen by many Iraqis as biased towards the resistance
and against the interim government.
Meanwhile, an internet statement, purportedly from the group
holding the French journalists Georges Malbrunot and Christian
Chesnot, has demanded that $5m (£2.8m) be paid within 48
hours. Over the weekend hopes were dashed of an early release
of the men, who were seized south of Baghdad on 20 August by a
group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq.
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