Baghdad, Iraq – American military deaths for July rose to 73 on Tuesday with the report of a Marine killed in combat, but the toll was still the lowest in eight months as the U.S. said it was gaining control of former militant strongholds.
By contrast, July was the second-deadliest month for Iraqis so far this year, according to an Associated Press tally.
U.S. military officials, while saying they were heartened by the downturn in American deaths, cautioned it was too early to predict a sustained trend.
“We had said over the summer it’s going to get harder before it gets easier,” said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a military spokesman in Baghdad. “We’re hoping that we’re in the easier part, but we still obviously have a long way to go.”
Nevertheless, the daily average for U.S. troop deaths in July was at least 2.35 – higher than the daily average of 2.25 last year and remarkably consistent with average daily casualties in 2005, at 2.32, and 2004, at 2.33.
This was also the deadliest July for U.S. troops since the war began. For the previous three years, the month of July saw a relatively low death toll. In July 2006, 43 U.S. troops were killed in Iraq, and 54 died in each of the previous two Julys.
The Defense Department, meanwhile, announced Tuesday that nearly 20,000 U.S. troops based in the United States will begin leaving for Iraq in December for a regular rotation of combat forces.
The incoming units from the Army and Marine Corps are not part of the U.S. troop buildup announced by President Bush in January, Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. All of the so-called “surge” forces arrived by mid-June.
Separately, an Apache helicopter went down Tuesday after taking ground fire in a predominantly Shiite area in eastern Baghdad, but both crew members were safely evacuated, the military said. Also, two unmanned drones have crashed this week at the Balad air base north of Baghdad, the military said.
American officials credited the drop in U.S. casualties with the new strategies put in place by commander Gen. David Petraeus, who has taken the fight to the enemy rather than keeping forces in defensive bases.
In all, at least 3,652 members of the U.S. military have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.
The figure includes seven military civilians.
Iraqi deaths rose, with at least 2,024 civilians, government officials and security forces killed in July, about 23 percent more than the 1,640 who died violently in June, according to AP figures compiled from police reports nationwide. That made July the second-deadliest month for Iraqis so far this year; at least 2,155 Iraqis were killed in May.
At least 32 Iraqis were killed or found dead on Tuesday, including 25 bullet-riddled and tortured bodies in Baghdad and the southeastern city of Kut.
