'07 deadliest year for U.S. troops in Iraq
BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Five U.S. soldiers were killed in Iraq on Monday, making 2007 the deadliest for the American military in the Iraq war.
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U.S. soldiers honor two fallen comrades at a memorial in Mosul, Iraq, on Saturday.
The grim record came despite lower death rates in recent months, which were not enough to offset death tolls that topped 100 during three months in the spring.
The five were killed in two separate roadside bombings, according to Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, a military official who briefed reporters in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad on Tuesday.
Four of the soldiers were killed when a bomb exploded near their vehicle in northern Iraq's Tameem province; the other died in combat in Anbar province.
According to a CNN count of Pentagon figures, 854 U.S. service members have died so far in 2007. The next highest death toll was in 2004, when 849 were killed.
The total number of U.S. military deaths in Iraq stands at 3,857, including seven civilian contractors of the Defense Department.
The high number of deaths this year corresponds with the U.S. troop buildup in late summer called the "surge" and a crackdown on insurgents in and near Baghdad.
Monthly death tolls were highest in the first part of the year: 83 deaths in January, 81 in February and 81 in March. Numbers peaked in the next three months, with 104 deaths in April, 126 in May and 101 in June.
The numbers have dropped from that level since -- with 79 in July, 84 in August, 65 in September, 40 in October and 10 so far in November.
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Civilian deaths have also dropped in recent months, U.S. and Iraqi authorities say.
The Iraq war began in March of 2003 and in that year there were 486 U.S. military deaths.
In 2004, major offensives were responsible for many fatalities, including the massive operation in Falluja in November and fighting between U.S. troops and Shiite militants in Najaf.
The number of deaths in 2005 was 846 and in 2006 it was 822.
Smith also announced on Tuesday that the United States intends "in the near future" to release nine detained Iranians held in Iraq.
"These individuals have been assessed to have no continuing value" and don't pose a "further threat" to Iraqi security, he said. Two of them are from the "Irbil 5" detained in January. Irbil is the largest city in the Kurdish area of Iraq.
Meanwhile, the Kurdistan Regional Government on Tuesday confirmed to CNN that two Iranian consulates had been established in the region, offices created in the wake of the arrests in Irbil.
At the time of the arrests, Iran insisted the arrested officials were "diplomats" working in a diplomatic mission, while Iraq's Foreign Ministry and the U.S. military said it was a "liaison" office which did not have diplomatic status.
Also Tuesday, the U.S. military reported that U.S. and Iraqi troops found 22 corpses in Iraq's Lake Tharthar region.
The Iraqi Army and local security forces "are investigating the mass grave to determine the identities of the deceased and the causes of death for notification of their families," the military said.
Lake Tharthar is in both Anbar and Salaheddin provinces and northwest of Baghdad.
U.S. and Iraqi troops have been conducting an operation in the same region since Sunday to target al Qaeda in Iraq.
So far, they have found and destroyed two car bomb facilities and a number of weapons caches and detained 30 men.
The military also said that coalition troops on Tuesday killed eight people described as terrorists and detained 10 suspects in operations targeting al Qaeda and foreign militant networks in central and northern Iraq. E-mail to a friend E-mail to a friend
