Report: Troop deaths from IEDs nearly doubled since start of 'surge'

Above: A soldier looks out his window as he passes the scene of an I.E.D. attack in Baghdad in April.

The number of American troops killed by homemade bombs in Iraq has nearly doubled this spring, since the "surge" of forces began, a stark reminder of the dangers there and a trend that intensifies pressure on the Pentagon agency charged with defeating the bombs.

As of Tuesday, the Defense Department confirms that 377 service members have been killed under hostile circumstances since Jan. 1 – with 265 of those deaths, or 70 percent, attributed to improvised explosive devices. That rate represents the average normally attributed to deaths from the bombs, called IEDs...

The actual number of service members – including soldiers, marines, and other troops – killed by IEDs rose from 39 in January to 78 in April. As of last Saturday, 48 more American service members have been killed by IEDs since the beginning of May, including seven who died Saturday (six of them in one attack in Baghdad).

Read the rest at the Christian Science Monitor

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