November 7, 2007
2007 Deadliest Year for U.S. Troops in Iraq
By DAMIEN CAVE
BAGHDAD, Nov. 6 - Six American soldiers were killed in three separate attacks
Monday, the military said today, taking the number of deaths this year to 851
and making 2007 the deadliest year of the war for American troops.

Military officials announced the discovery of a mass grave holding 22 bodies
in a rural area north of Falluja. It also said that nine Iranians being held
in Iraq would soon be released, including two detained during a January raid
of a consulate office in Erbil.

Five of the American soldiers died in two roadside bomb attacks on Monday near
Kirkuk, said Rear Adm. Gregory Smith, director of the communications division
of the Multinational Force-Iraq, the formal name for the United States-led
forces.

A sixth soldier died Monday during combat operations in Anbar Province,
according to a military statement.

The deaths come only a few days after the military announced a steep drop in
the rate of American deaths this year. In October, 38 American service members
died in Iraq, the third lowest monthly tally since 2003, according to Iraq
Casualty Count, a web site that tracks military deaths. November's total, if
the current pace continues, would be higher but still far below the war's
average of 69 American military deaths per month.

Despite the decline, American commanders acknowledged that 2007 will be far
deadlier than the second worst year, 2004, when 849 Americans died, many of
them in major battles for control of insurgent strongholds like Falluja.

Military officials attribute the rise this year to an expanded troop presence
during the so-called surge, which brought more than 165,000 troops to Iraq,
and sent units out of large bases and into more dangerous communities.

Commanders maintain that despite the high cost in terms of lives lost, the
strategy has brought improved security to the country and "tactical momentum"
that could stabilize Iraq permanently.

The potential release of the Iranians may reflect American approval of some
signs that Iran is cooperating with their demand that it staunch the flow of
materials into Iraq used to make deadly roadside bombs known as explosively
formed projectiles, or EFPs.

Rear Admiral Smith said that the EFP components found recently during raids
"do not appear to have arrived here in Iraq after those pledges were made,"
suggesting that Iran has limited EFP trafficking across the border after
promising to do so.

American commanders have stopped short of declaring that Iran has in fact
complied with the United States' demands, and today Rear Admiral Smith
described the plan to release nine Iranian prisoners not as a diplomatic
reward but rather as the perfunctory end to a criminal investigation.

"These individuals have no continuing value, nor do they pose a further threat
to Iraqi security," he said.

Rear Admiral Smith did not say why the two Iranians captured in January at an
Iranian consulate office in Erbil were held for nine months, after Iran
insisted that they were harmless government workers.

Meanwhile, violence against Iraqis continued. The mass grave was found
Saturday during a joint American-Iraqi operation in the Lake Tharthar area, a
desolate rural area near the site of another grave, holding 25 bodies, that
was found less than a month ago.

Local police officials said the bodies were dumped in and around an abandoned
building.

"Some were buried in wells and some were left in rooms used as prisons," said
a police officer who helped clear the grave. "These corpses are part of what
we expect to find more of in the future."