87 U.S. Troops Killed in Iraq in April - More than 560 have been wounded

WASHINGTON - For American forces in Iraq (news - web sites), these are the deadliest days of the war. At least 87 U.S. troops have been killed in action so far this month, with the most recent death announced on Tuesday. Also this month, more than 560 have been wounded and two soldiers were declared missing. At least four American civilians were killed, one contractor was captured by gunmen and six others were missing and feared abducted.


The number wounded so far in April exceeds the total for any other full month of the war by more than 220.


Even the opening days of the conflict, while deadly and tense, were not as costly in American blood. In the first 13 days after invading U.S. and British forces crossed the Kuwaiti border into southern Iraq on March 20, 2003, a total of 77 U.S. troops were killed in action and 10 more died from non-hostile causes.


The toll keeps climbing. Central Command reported Tuesday that one soldier of the 1st Infantry Division was killed and another was wounded in a roadside bomb attack south of Baghdad.

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U.S. war dead in Iraq exceed early Vietnam years

PHILADELPHIA – The U.S. death toll in Iraq has surpassed the number of American soldiers killed during the first three years of the Vietnam War, the brutal Cold War conflict that cast a shadow over U.S. affairs for more than a generation.

A Reuters analysis of U.S. Defense Department statistics showed Thursday that the Vietnam War, which the Army says officially began on Dec. 11, 1961, produced a combined 392 fatal casualties from 1962 through 1964, when American troop levels in Indochina stood at just over 17,000.

By comparison, a roadside bomb attack that killed a soldier in Baghdad Wednesday brought to 397 the tally of American dead in Iraq, where U.S. forces currently number about 130,000 troops – the same number reached in Vietnam by October 1965.

The casualty count for Iraq apparently surpassed the Vietnam figure last Sunday, when a U.S. soldier killed in a rocket-propelled grenade attack south of Baghdad became the conflict's 393rd American casualty since Operation Iraqi Freedom began on March 20.

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