Bloodiest month in Iraq leaves 105 troops dead

The bloodiest month since the United States led the invasion and occupation of Iraq has come to a deadly close after insurgents killed 14 people from five nations in a weekend of apparently carefully calculated attacks.

Days after President George Bush slipped briefly into the country on Thanksgiving, his opponents responded by killing civilian contract workers, military intelligence agents, diplomats and soldiers.

Last night, the Americans claimed they had killed 54 Iraqis who were involved in a series of ambushes on US convoys in the central city of Samarra. Eighteen Iraqi fighters and five US soldiers were also injured.

During the past month, however, America's allies bore the brunt of the assaults which were intended to fuel opposition within their countries to the occupation and to hinder efforts to rebuild Iraq. The latest military deaths bring the number of troops to die in November in Iraq to 105 ­ 79 American soldiers and 26 allied troops ­ the highest yet. That figure includes 19 Italians blown up in Nasiriyah by a suicide truck bomber, and 17 American soldiers who died when two Black Hawk helicopters crashed in an incident that the US military now say might have started with a missile strike. That is the largest monthly casualty total since the war began on 20 March ­ a grim statistic that gives the lie to claims by the US military that the guerrilla war is under control.

If the deaths of six US soldiers in Afghanistan last month are added, November was the most costly month for the American military since February 1991, when 162 US troops were killed in the 1990-91 Gulf war. In the space of 48 hours, insurgents killed two South Korean electricians, a Colombian contractor, seven Spanish military intelligence officers, two Japanese diplomats and two American soldiers.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=468919

they realize there's no hope, so the thugs have resorted to killing the coalition forces.

:shrug:

:shrug: