Marines' death toll in August surpasses Army's

By ROBERT BURNS
The Associated Press

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The trend has continued this month. Eleven of the first 17 U.S. military deaths have been Marines, including seven who perished Monday in a suicide car bombing near the city of Fallujah.

August was the only month, aside from March 2003 when the U.S. invasion was launched, in which Marine deaths in Iraq exceeded those of the Army.

It is difficult to pinpoint the reasons for the unusually high Marines' death toll because details on the circumstances of battle deaths are limited to either "enemy action" or "non-combat related." The Army specifies the type of weapon that caused the death as well as the city where it happened.

The vast majority of Marine deaths in August — 24 of the 33 total — were in the western province of Anbar, which includes the restive cities of Fallujah and Ramadi as well as dangerous areas on the Syrian border where Marines patrol to keep out foreign infiltrators and smugglers.

Fallujah was the scene of devastating clashes last spring until the Marines pulled out. Since then, resistance fighters have deposed the city's U.S.-backed leaders and the United States has launched airstrikes at safe houses thought to be used by followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the militant believed responsible for bombings, kidnappings and other violence in Iraq.

The Marines are no longer in Fallujah but have been attacked many times outside the city.

Last month, Marines took the lead in ferocious fighting around Najaf, the holy city in south-central Iraq where radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia battled U.S. and American-backed Iraqi forces for three weeks before a peace deal was arranged.

But that did not account for the increase in Marine casualties. Seven of the 33 Marines who died in Iraq in August were in the Najaf fighting; the Army had five of its 30 losses there.

Marines and soldiers are still getting killed by insurgents using rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and roadside bombs. The bombs — improvised devices often armed with 155mm artillery shells — are placed along roadways and disguised, often detonating as U.S. or Iraqi government troops approach.

The lone Air Force death in Iraq in August was caused by a roadside bomb near Mosul in northern Iraq. It killed Airman 1st Class Carl L. Anderson, Jr., 21, of Georgetown, S.C., on Aug. 29. A day later, Army Staff Sgt. Aaron N. Holleyman, 26, of Glasgow, Mont., was killed when his vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb. He was a member of the elite 5th Special Forces Group.
 
Away from the spotlight in Najaf and areas in and around Baghdad in August, a number of Marines were killed in far western Iraq, near the Syrian border.

They included Lance Cpl. Joseph L. Nice, 19, of Nicoma Park, Okla., and Gunnery Sgt. Elia P. Fontecchio, 30, of Milford, Mass., who were killed within a half-hour of each other Aug. 4 at Qaim, near the Syrian border. Fontecchio was felled by a roadside bomb and Nice by a sniper's bullet, according to the Washington Post, which recently reported from the Qaim area.

Nice and Fontecchio were among three from the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment of the 1st Marine Division who were killed in August. The unit, which is returning home after seven months in Iraq, lost two more Sept. 3. Eighteen have been killed since the unit arrived in Iraq, compared with just one killed during the battalion's first deployment to Iraq in 2003.

Another Marine unit operating near the Syrian border, the 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, lost two men in August. That unit has been overseeing construction of forts along the border to be used as headquarters by Iraqi border-patrol units.