BAGHDAD — October is on course to record the second consecutive decline in U.S. military and Iraqi civilian deaths, and Americans commanders say they know why: the troop increase and an Iraqi groundswell against al-Qaeda and Shiite militia extremists.
Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch points to what the military calls “Concerned Citizens” – Shiites and Sunnis who have joined the American fight. He says he has signed up 20,000 of them in the past four months.
As of Tuesday, the Pentagon reported 28 U.S. military deaths in October. That’s an average of about 1.2 deaths a day. The toll on U.S troops hasn’t been this low since March 2006, when 31 soldiers died.
In September, 65 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq.
U.N.: 1,000 Iraqis flee homes each day
GENEVA — At least 1,000 Iraqis are fleeing their homes each day because of violence and insecurity – a figure that could increase with threats of cross-border attacks into northern Iraq, the U.N. refugee agency said Tuesday.
Nearly 4.5 million Iraqis have fled the country or have been displaced inside Iraq, said the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
The estimates – 2.2 million refugees in neighboring countries, mostly Jordan and Syria, and about 2.3 million internally displaced – are slightly higher than figures released last month by the agency and suggest that a recent decline in major insurgent attacks across Iraq has not slowed the flow of people seeking safer havens.
