1,000th U.S. Soldier Killed in Action in Iraq
Tue Dec 7, 2004 11:17 AM ET
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - The number of U.S. troops killed in action in Iraq hit 1,000 Tuesday when the military said a soldier had been shot dead on patrol in Baghdad.
"One Task Force Baghdad soldier died of wounds received at about 11:30 a.m. on Dec. 7. The soldier was on patrol when the unit came under small arms fire," the military in Iraq said in a typically brief routine statement.
"The name of the soldier killed is being withheld pending notification of next of kin."
Earlier in the day, the Pentagon had issued a revised combat casualty toll of 999, a figure which had risen sharply last month during the U.S. assault on Sunni Muslim insurgents in the city of Falluja. At least 71 Americans were killed there.
In all, 1,275 U.S. service personnel have died during the Iraq operation, launched with the invasion on March 20 last year. This figure includes accidents, suicides and other deaths not classed as being killed in action.
A total of 9,765 U.S. troops have been wounded.
No official figures are available for the numbers of Iraqi dead. Estimates have ranged from some 14,000 to tens of thousands of civilians and around 5,000 troops in the war.
A U.S. soldier was killed in Baghdad Tuesday when his patrol came under fire, the U.S. military said in statement.
The death of the unnamed soldier took the U.S. combat death toll since the invasion of Iraq on March 20 last year to 1,000. The latest Pentagon casualty figures, published earlier on Tuesday, put the number of Americans killed in action at 999.
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