Coalition Forces dead in Afghanistan by Year (click here) - Total 1536
HAPPY HOLIDAYS !!!!
16,000 U.S. troops receive orders to Afghanistan (click here)
December 7, 1:22 PM
About 16,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines have already received word over the past few days that they'll be part of the first wave of troops sent to Afghanistan under the upcoming surge, the Pentagon has announced....
Evidently President Obama not only gave the Liar Secretary Gates the right to send more troops then he stated to the nation, he also allowed flexibility in the length of the engagement.
BY Richard Sisk DAILY NEWS WASHINGTON BUREAU
Friday, December 4th 2009
...Gates said President Obama had given him the "flexibility" to boost the surge force, in the same sense that Obama has made the "target date" of July 2011 to start withdrawing the surge forces flexible....
A Pakistani firefighter worked to extinguish a fire at the bomb blast site in Lahore on Monday. (click here)
Lahore: Two synchronised, remote-controlled bombs ripped through a market popular with women in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore on Mondayday, killing at least 36 people and igniting a massive fire, authorities said.
Another attack by a suicide bomber killed 10 in the northwestern city of Peshawar, part of a wave of terrorist strikes in Pakistan as the army presses an offensive against a Taliban stronghold in the northwest.
About 100 people were wounded in the attacks in Lahore, which were apparently timed to take place when the Moon Market was at its busiest. The bombs exploded within 30 seconds of each other, leaving dozens of cars and shops ablaze.
Women and children, including a two-year-old were among those killed, a police officer said. Many of the injured were removed to Shaikh Zayed Hospital, which is nearest to the site of the attacks.
Firefighters battled the blaze and rescue workers struggled in the darkness that enveloped the area as power to the market was cut off as a result of the explosions....
October 11th, 2006 1:20 AM
Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000 (click here)
By David Brown / Washington Post
A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.
The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling of households throughout the country, is far higher than ones produced by other groups, including Iraq's government.
It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group.
The surveyors said they found a steady increase in mortality since the invasion, with a steeper rise in the last year that appears to reflect a worsening of violence as reported by the U.S. military, the news media and civilian groups. In the year ending in June, the team calculated Iraq's mortality rate to be roughly four times what it was the year before the war.
Of the total 655,000 estimated "excess deaths," 601,000 resulted from violence and the rest from disease and other causes, according to the study. This is about 500 unexpected violent deaths per day throughout the country.
The survey was done by Iraqi physicians and overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health. The findings are being published online today by the British medical journal the Lancet.
The same group in 2004 published an estimate of roughly 100,000 deaths in the first 18 months after the invasion. That figure was much higher than expected, and was controversial. The new study estimates that about 500,000 more Iraqis, both civilian and military, have died since then -- a finding likely to be equally controversial....
Students among dead in school blast (click here)
(UKPA) – 3 hours ago
An explosion outside an elementary school in a Shiite district of Baghdad has killed at least eight people.
The blast occurred in the Shiite district of Sadr City, where large-scale attacks have been infrequent because of tight security by US and Iraqi forces as a well as the neighbourhood's own guards.
Police and witnesses gave conflicting information about whether the blast was caused by a bomb, a rocket or an exploding weapons cache.
Among the dead were six children between the ages of six and 12, and 41 people were wounded, said officials from the police and Interior Ministry. Twenty-five children were among the wounded, two hospital officials said.
The blast partially toppled a brick wall in front of the school, leaving a crater that quickly filled with muddy water, apparently from a broken water line.
Inside at least one classroom, windows were blasted out and shards of glass were strewn over desks. Blood stained the wooden desks and books. Many backpacks were tossed about the room.
Sadr City is home to an estimated 2.5 million Shiites and is a stronghold of anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
In 2008, Shiite militants there poured rocket fire onto the Green Zone during the last major fighting in the city. Al-Sadr's order to his militia fighters to cease fire has been cited by the US military as a key factor in a steep drop in violence nationwide, along with a US troop buildup and a Sunni revolt against al Qaida in Iraq.
Iraqi and US military officials have expressed concern about a possible new rise in attacks.
UK soldier becomes 100th to die in Afghanistan in 2009 (click here)
20:28 GMT, Monday, 7 December 2009
A British soldier has been shot dead in Afghanistan, taking the total number killed there this year to 100.
The soldier from 1st Battalion The Royal Anglian Regiment died after an incident in central Helmand Province on Monday. Next of kin have been informed.
The total number of UK troops killed since the start of operations in Afghanistan in October 2001 has now reached 237....
