Thursday, May 1, 2008

U.S. Troop Deaths Push Monthly Toll to 7-month High in Iraq

Sounds like the surge was only a short term "success" we are going back to the bad old days. Unfortunately the Democrats have dropped the Iraq war as an issue. This means American soldiers will continue to die while politicians fiddle:

The killings of five U.S. soldiers in separate attacks in Baghdad pushed the American death toll for April up to 49, making it the deadliest month since September.

One soldier died when his vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb. The second died of wounds sustained when he was attacked by small-arms fire, the military said Wednesday. Both incidents occurred Tuesday in northwestern Baghdad.

A third soldier died after being struck by a bomb while on a foot patrol early Wednesday in a northern section of the capital, while another roadside bomb killed two American soldiers in southern Baghdad, the military said in separate statements.

The spike in U.S. troop deaths comes as intense combat has been raging in Sadr City and other neighborhoods between Shiite militants and U.S.-Iraqi troops for more than a month.

Rather than winding down the fiasco in Iraq, Bush is busy spreading the "war on terror" elsewhere:
Aden Hashi Ayro, al-Shabab's military commander, died when his home in the central town of Dusamareb was bombed.

Ten other people, including a senior militant, are also reported dead.

A US military spokesman told the BBC that it had attacked what he called a known al-Qaeda target in Somalia, but refused to give further details.

Al-Shabab, considered a terrorist group by the US, is the military wing of the Somali Sharia courts movement, the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), until Ethiopian troops ousted them in 2006.

The group has since regrouped and is in effect in control of large parts of central and southern Somalia.

[...]"This incident will cause a lot problems to US interests in the region and the governments who support the US, by that I mean its allies who are puppets," he said, referring to Ethiopia which backs Somalia's interim government.

"I am letting the citizens of the US and the allies know they are not going to be safe in this area."

In its annual report on terrorism published on Wednesday, the US said al-Shabab militants in Somalia, along with al-Qaeda militants in east Africa, posed "the most serious threat to American and allied interests in the region".

Al-Shabab has been at the forefront of a guerrilla insurgency against the government and its Ethiopian allies since early 2007.

In recent weeks, they have briefly captured several towns in central and southern Somalia before withdrawing.

The US has launched several air strikes against suspected extremist targets in Somalia in recent months.

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