Baghdad, Iraq – Four years into the war that opened with “shock and awe,” U.S. warplanes have again stepped up attacks in Iraq, dropping bombs at more than twice the rate of a year ago.
The airpower escalation parallels a nearly 4-month-old security crackdown that is bringing 30,000 additional U.S. troops into Baghdad and its surroundings – an urban campaign aimed at restoring order to an area riven with sectarian violence.
It also reflects increased availability of planes from U.S. aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf. And it appears to be accompanied by a rise in Iraqi civilian casualties.
In the first 4 1/2 months of 2007, American aircraft dropped 237 bombs and missiles in support of ground forces in Iraq, already surpassing the 229 expended in all of 2006, according to Air Force figures obtained by The Associated Press.
The Air Force report did not break down the specific locations in Iraq where bombings have been stepped up.
But U.S.-led forces also are locked in new and dangerous fronts against insurgents outside Baghdad in such places as Diyala province, northeast of the capital.
A second U.S. Navy aircraft carrier on station since February in the Persian Gulf has added about 80 warplanes to the U.S. air arsenal in the region.
At the same time, the number of civilian Iraqi casualties from U.S. airstrikes appears to have risen sharply, according to Iraq Body Count, a London-based, anti-war research group that maintains a database compiling news media reports on Iraqi war deaths.
The rate of such reported civilian deaths appeared to climb steadily through 2006, the group reports, averaging just a few a month in early 2006, hitting about 40 a month by year’s end, and averaging more than 50 a month so far this year.
Those are maximum tolls based on news reports, and they count those killed by Army helicopter fire as well as by warplanes, Iraq Body Count’s John Sloboda said.
The count is regarded as conservative, since it doesn’t include deaths missed by the international media.
The U.S. military says it doesn’t track civilian casualties.
Air Force Col. Gary Crowder, deputy director of the regional air operations center, said airstrike casualties “pale in comparison” with civilian casualties from ground combat.
“In Iraq, we minimize our deployment of air-delivered weapons in populated areas,” he said.
Air attacks in Iraq are still relatively low compared with the number of bombs dropped in Afghanistan – 929 this year as of May 15.
