US postwar death toll tops wartime fatalities
The killing of two soldiers, blown up in their Abrams main battle tank near Baghdad, took the number of fatalities to 117 since President George W Bush declared an end to major fighting on May 1. A total of 114 US soldiers died in the war , which began on March 20. In Baghdad, the average number of anti-US attacks has reached 33 a day in the past week. This is more than a 50% increase over levels of early September. By mid-October that number had reached about 26 a day.
Two US soldiers were killed when their Abrams battle tank was damaged by resistance fighters, US officials said. In a separate attack, seven Ukrainian troops were wounded in the first ambush on a multi-national unit in the Polish sector south of Baghdad The Abrams tank was disabled when it was struck by a land mine or a roadside bomb on Tuesday night during a patrol near Balad, 45 miles north of Baghdad, said Maj Josslyn Aberle, a spokeswoman for the 4th Infantry Division. A third crewman was evacuated to a US hospital in Germany, she said.
