Report: 19,000 'insurgents' killed since 2003; Nearly 5,000 this year

Above: A boy weeps over the coffin of his father after a U.S. air strike in the Dora area of Baghdad today. Iraqi police and witnesses said U.S. troops backed by helicopter gun ships raided an apartment building, killing at list 10 civilians and wounding 12. The U.S. military said it was checking into the report.

Since 2003, 19,000 Iraq insurgents killed

U.S.-led coalition forces have killed more than 19,000 insurgents in Iraq since the invasion in March 2003, USA Today reported Thursday.

Under a Freedom of Information request, the U.S. military told the newspaper a database of "significant acts" showed 19,429 militants were killed in clashes with coalition forces, although the numbers don't include those killed during the first wave of the invasion that toppled Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

During the same period, 3,800 U.S. troops have been killed, along with 300 others from Britain and other coalition countries, figures from the independent Iraq Coalition Casualty Count Web site showed.

For this year, insurgent deaths totaled 4,882, which is 25 percent higher than all of last year, the military said.

Read the rest at UPI

19,000 insurgents killed in Iraq since '03

The size of the insurgency in Iraq has been difficult to measure and is fluid, making it hard to determine what impact the deaths have had on the insurgency in Iraq.

Last year, Gen. John Abizaid, then commander of military forces in the region, estimated the Sunni insurgency to be 10,000 to 20,000 fighters. He said the Shiite militia members were in the "low thousands." The U.S. military hasn't publicly provided any recent estimates.

There are 25,000 detainees in U.S. military custody in Iraq, according to the military. The numbers of enemy killed and detained would exceed the estimate given last year of the size of the insurgency...

The U.S. military rarely discusses the numbers of enemy dead, fearful of raising parallels with the Vietnam War when the U.S. military's reliance on "body counts" led to allegations of inflated figures because of political pressure to show results.

Read the rest at USA Today

Related Link:
Bush: 'We are still in the early stages' of surge; Says '1,500 al Qaeda terrorists and other extremists' killed or captured each month since January