U.S. Toll Hits 115 in May, Highest in 21/2 Years

May 30, 07:53 AM

Current Headlines: From wire reports

BAGHDAD - The U.S. military announced Tuesday that 10 American soldiers were killed in Iraq on Memorial Day, making May the deadliest month for U.S. troops in 21/2 years, as insurgents continued attacks on official and civilian targets.

With 115 fatalities, according to The Associated Press, May is the third-deadliest month of the war. The most lethal months were November and April 2004, with 137 and 135 American fatalities respectively, when the U.S. military launched two offensives against Sunni insurgents in the town of Fallujah, 25 miles west of Baghdad.

U.S. officials have warned that a strategy of putting more U.S. troops on the streets and in small combat outposts, part of a new security plan launched in February, would lead to higher casualties.

Meanwhile, gunmen dressed in police uniforms staged a well- coordinated kidnapping Tuesday at Iraq's Finance Ministry and abducted five people whom the British Foreign Office identified as British citizens.

Two vehicle bombings in Baghdad left at least 44 people dead and 74 wounded.

And the bodies of 32 men - all shot and tortured, some handcuffed and blindfolded - were found in two locations north and south of the capital on Tuesday, a senior Iraqi security official said.

An additional 35 bodies were dumped or buried in a newly dug mass grave in Diyala province.

Eight of the U.S. fatalities Monday occurred in the same incident: A U.S. helicopter crashed in Diyala province, north of Baghdad, killing two soldiers, and insurgents then ambushed a rapid response team that was rushing to rescue them, killing another six with a barrage of roadside bombs, said Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, a military spokesman.

"They are an adaptive, difficult enemy with an ability to change tactics to adapt to what's happening on the ground," Garver said.

He said it was unclear whether the roadside bombs were there beforehand or were put in place there after the helicopter went down. He said the cause of the crash was under investigation.

Two more soldiers were killed Monday by a roadside bomb in South Baghdad, the military reported.

Most of the 28,500 additional troops being sent to Iraq are to be stationed in high-visibility posts in and around Baghdad, to heighten the sense of security and lower the rate of violence. U.S. officials say the new troop build-up needs more time to prove whether it can be successful.

President Bush cited the higher-risk tactics in a news conference last week, saying, "We're going to expect heavy fighting in the weeks and months (ahead). We can expect more American and Iraqi casualties.

"It could be a bloody - it could be a very difficult August," he added.

"Generally speaking," Garver said, "we are operating with more troops on the ground, in more areas than before - especially in places we haven't been before - and that creates the potential for more contact between us and the enemy that can lead to more casualties."

While the short-term risks of having so many more troops on the streets are high, Garver said, in the long run "that's going to bring more stability. Being out with the Iraqi forces and earning the confidence of the people will lead to better cooperation with the population and separate them from the insurgents and make sure they're on our side."

Meanwhile, the British Foreign Office mobilized its crisis management task force, dubbed COBRA, to respond to the kidnapping of five British citizens from the Iraq Finance Ministry shortly before 9 a.m. Tuesday.

Brig. Gen. Abdul Mareem Khalaf, spokesman for the Interior Ministry, said the abductions occurred when 19 vehicles sped into the Finance Ministry compound in north Baghdad and launched a well- planned kidnapping operation. A second Interior Ministry official said the men in the vehicles were all dressed in National Police uniforms.

Joe Gavaghan, a spokesman for GardaWorld, a Montreal-based security company, said in a telephone interview that four of the company's security guards and a client were abducted in the raid. A spokesman for the U.S. consulting firm BearingPoint told the British Press Association that the client was one of their employees. An official familiar with kidnapping said the BearingPoint employee was a British national. None of the officials would identify the victims by name.

Kidnappings of Iraqis, usually for ransom and sometimes by sectarian death squads, are an everyday happening in Iraq, occurring by some estimates as often as 30 to 40 times a day across the nation. But the kidnapping of foreigners - most often government contractors, but sometimes journalists and international aid workers - has gone in waves. There have been 300 foreigners abducted since the start of the war, and of those 54 were killed, 157 gained freedom, and the fate of 89 is unknown, according to the Brookings Institution's Iraq Index.

In recent months, however, the number of foreigners kidnapped in Iraq has dropped steeply. Only six had been kidnapped this year before Tuesday's abductions.

Earlier Tuesday, at least 24 people were killed and 51 were injured when a minibus exploded in a crowed commercial district in central Baghdad, said a senior Iraqi police official who was not authorized to be quoted by name. The blast occurred in Tayaran Square, a bustling market and commercial area where Shiites frequently catch commuter buses to their jobs in Sadr City.

Later, a car bomb detonated by remote control exploded in the mixed Sunni Arab and Shiite neighborhood of Amil, in southeast Baghdad, killing 20 and injuring 23, he said.

This story was compiled from reports by The Washington Post and The Associated Press.

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