WASHINGTON, Feb. 10 (UPI) -- It was a mixed week for U.S. and allied Iraqi forces fighting the insurgency: U.S. troop fatalities were significantly up but numbers of wounded were down. There was a welcome and possibly highly significant fall in the fatalities inflicted on Iraqi security forces, but terror bomb attacks on Iraqi civilians continued at a disturbingly high level.
The total number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq through Friday, Feb. 10 since the start of U.S. operations to topple Saddam Hussein on March 19, 2003, was 2,270, according to official figures issued by the Department of Defense, a rise of 22 in seven days, or an average of more than 3.1 killed per day.
This was more than five days the rate of the previous five-day period when only three U.S. soldiers were killed. It was not quite as bad as the 33 U.S. soldiers killed in only seven days from Jan. 11 through Jan. 17, an average of 4.7 soldiers killed per day and on the figure of 28 in the Jan. 4-10 period when the average death rate was 4 U.S. soldiers killed per day. But it indicated a discouraging return to those levels of casualties.
However, the rate at which U.S. soldiers were being injured in Iraq dropped significantly. In the seven days from Feb. 4 through Feb. 10, 47 U.S. soldiers were injured, according to the DOD figures, at an average rate of just below seven per day. This was a more than 50 percent improvement on the previous five-day period from Monday, Jan. 30 through Friday, Feb. 3 when 58 U.S. soldiers were injured, according to the DOD figures, at an average rate of 11.6 per day.
It was, however, very close to the rate of 7.4 U.S. soldiers injured per day during the Jan. 11-17 period. This suggested that the insurgency continues at a stable level, neither metastasizing to a new level, nor being significantly reduced by U.S. military operations or political initiatives.
The number of U.S. troops wounded in action from the beginning of hostilities on March 19, 2003, through Feb. 10, was 16,653, according to the Department of Defense figures.
Some 7,706 of those troops were wounded so seriously that they were listed as "WIA Not RTD" in the DOD figures. In other words: Wounded in Action Not Returned to Duty, an increase of 23 such casualties in seven days at an average rate of just under 3.3 per day. This was an improvement of more than 40 percent on the previous five-day period when 24 U.S. troops were wounded seriously enough that they were not returned to duty at an average rate of 4.8 per day.
However, the rate at which U.S. troops were being wounded was still more than 20 percent worse than the rate of 2.5 per day for the seven-day period of Jan. 11-17. In all an estimated 2,000 of the U.S. soldiers wounded in Iraq, or one in eight of them, have suffered brain damage, loss of limbs or been crippled for life by their injuries.
There was another lull in the first week of February in the number of fatal attacks on Iraqi security forces. According to the Iraq Index Project of the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, only 21 of them were killed by insurgent action in the first six days of February, an average rate of only 3.3 killed per day.
If maintained for the whole month of February, this would yield a projected figure of only 92.4 Iraqi police and troops killed in the month, less than half the figures for November and December. This could prove to be the lowest casualty figure per month for such attacks since 2003. If these figures could be maintained through February, they would mark a trend of great positive significance.
By contrast, 89 Iraqi police and troops were killed in the 16 days from Jan. 17 though Feb. 1, an average of just over 8.5 per day, according to the Iraq Index Project. That was a significant increase from average rate of 7.75 per day killed during the eight-day period from Jan. 9 through Jan. 16. And it was more than double the rate of the Jan. 3 through Jan. 8 six-day period when 25 Iraqi police and troops were killed, an average of 4.17 per day.
The latest figures were only about 35 percent the daily rate of fatalities inflicted on Iraqi forces during the seven-day period from Dec. 27 through Jan. 2 when 65 Iraqi police and troops killed, an average of just below 9.3 per day. The total number of Iraqi police and military killed from June 1, 2003, to Feb. 6, 2005, was 4,079, according to the Iraq Index Project figures.
However, the insurgents were able to maintain their rate of inflicting multiple bomb fatality (MFB) attacks on Iraqi civilians. There were eight such attacks in the first six days of February according to the Iraq Index Project figures, an average of 1.33 per day. This was a slight increase on the 19 multiple fatality bombings in the 16 days from Jan. 17 through Feb. 1, an average of just below 1.25 per day. And the rate of MFB attacks in the first six days of February was more than four times the rate of such attacks during the Jan. 9 to Jan. 16 period.
If the insurgents can manage to keep up that rate of MFB attacks through February, they will manage more than 37 of them, a significant rise over the 30 such attacks they carried out in January and the 21 such attacks recorded in December. This could bring the February figures close to the record rates of 46, 39 and 41 MFB attacks in October, November, and December.
In the first six days of February, 38 people were killed in such attacks and 137 wounded. If maintained through the entire month, this rate of attacks would yield casualties of 177 killed and 640 injured. Through the month of January, 305 people were killed in MFB attacks and another 397 wounded. In December, MFB attacks killed 155 people and wounded 174.
According to the Iraq Index Project figures up to Feb. 6, 5,375 people have been killed in MFB attacks since the start of the insurgency and another 10,631 wounded. However, MFB statistics do not include killed and injured in bombings where less than three people were killed.
