U.S. military deaths in Iraq at 3,795

As of Saturday, Sept. 22, 2007, at least 3,795 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians. At least 3,095 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

The AP count is seven higher than the Defense Department's tally, last updated Friday at 10 a.m. EDT.
The British military has reported 169 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 21; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, seven; El Salvador, five; Slovakia, four; Latvia, three; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Romania, South Korea, one death each.
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The latest deaths reported by the military:
• A soldier died Saturday in a vehicle accident in Diyala province.
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The latest identifications reported by the military:
• Army Pfc. Luigi Marciante Jr., 25, Elizabeth, N.J.; died Thursday in Muqdadiyah, of wounds sustained when an improvised explosive device detonated near his vehicle; assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, Stryker Brigade Combat Team, Fort Lewis, Wash.
• Army Spc. John J. Young, 24, Savannah, Ga.; died Friday in Camp Stryker, of injuries suffered from a non-combat related incident; assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 14th Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division (Light Infantry), Fort Drum, N.Y.
• Army Capt. (Dr.) Roselle M. Hoffmaster, 32, Cleveland, Ohio; died Thursday in Kirkuk, of injuries sustained from a non-combat related incident; assigned to the Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 1st Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, Fort Drum, N.Y.
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Bin Laden urges Pakistanis to rebel

CAIRO, Egypt - Osama bin Laden called on Pakistanis to wage holy war on their president Thursday, saying in a new recording that it was their religious duty to overthrow Gen. Pervez Musharraf for his alliance with the U.S. against Islamic militants.
The message was the third from bin Laden this month after a long lull, coming in a flurry of al-Qaida propaganda marking the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks on the United States.
Joining in, bin Laden's chief deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, issued a video Thursday seeking to galvanize Islamic fighters from North Africa to Afghanistan.
Al-Zawahri, who is seen by some counterterrorism experts to be al-Qaida's operational chief rather than bin Laden, said the United States is losing wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
"What they claim to be the strongest power in the history of mankind is today being defeated in front of the Muslim vanguards of jihad (holy war) six years after the two raids on New York and Washington," he said.
The string of video and audio messages around the anniversary has shown an increased sense of triumphalism in al-Qaida's tone at a time when U.S. intelligence reports say its core leadership appears to have regrouped in the Afghan-Pakistani border region.
"You can actually see the increase in the number of videos tie in with recent U.S. assessments that al-Qaida is resurgent, that it is much stronger," said Michael Jacobson, a former FBI terrorism expert now at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
"They're feeling more stable, feeling much more secure, so it's not a surprise that they're able to put out more videos," he added.
Many of the messages have hammered on U.S. struggles in Iraq to push the claim that Islamic militants are winning, and bin Laden's video against Musharraf signaled that al-Qaida wants to turn its guns on one of the United States' most important allies in fighting the terror network.
Al-Zawahri and another top al-Qaida figure, Abu Yahia al-Libi, already called for Pakistanis to rise up against Musharraf in recent messages. But the tape from bin Laden, al-Qaida's most symbolic and charismatic figure, adds weight to the declaration of jihad against the Pakistani leader.
In a 23-minute video showing previously released footage of bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader's voice delivered a call to jihad in Arabic with English subtitles, but the message also was released in versions dubbed in Urdu and Pashtu — languages widely used in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Bin Laden branded Musharraf an infidel because of the siege of the Red Mosque, a militant stronghold in the Pakistani capital overrun by commandos in July. The battle killed more than 100 people, including one of the militants' leaders, Abdul Rashid Ghazi.
The siege "demonstrated Musharraf's insistence on continuing his loyalty, submissiveness and aid to America against the Muslims," bin Laden said. "It is obligatory on the Muslims in Pakistan to carry out jihad and fighting to remove Pervez, his government, his army and those who help him."
In the recording, titled "Come to Jihad," bin Laden quoted fatwas, or religious edicts, from hard-line Islamic scholars on the duty of Muslims to overthrow infidel rulers.
Anyone "who believes that the strength required to rebel has not yet been completed must complete it and take up arms against Pervez and his army without procrastination," he said.
The message comes at a delicate time for Musharraf, who has been targeted by four assassination attempts since 2002.
His popularity has plummeted in recent months as he seeks a new presidential term in an Oct. 6 vote by Pakistani lawmakers. Under popular pressure, his aides announced that Musharraf would quit as army chief and restore civilian rule if elected to a new five-year term.
The mosque siege also brought a wave of violence and suicide attacks in Pakistan blamed on Taliban and al-Qaida militants, intensifying the discontent of religious conservatives over Musharraf's alliance with the United States.
In Islamabad, the Pakistan army spokesman, Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad, said "such threats issued through videos or in any other way cannot deter us from fulfilling our national duty" to "eradicate terrorism."
State Department spokesman Tom Casey said the message was "not surprising" because bin Laden's sees that Pakistan has been a strong ally to the U.S. "in the fight against his kind of extremism."
Before this month, bin Laden had not issued a message in more than a year. A video released a few days before the Sept. 11 anniversary contained the first new images of him in nearly three years.
The other video released Thursday showed off al-Qaida's increasing media sophistication. It amounted to an 80-minute documentary interweaving al-Zawahri's speech with footage from the Sept. 11 attacks, interviews with experts and officials taken from Western and Arab television and old footage and audiotapes of bin Laden.
Al-Zawahri is believed to play a large role in directing al-Qaida's strategy on the ground, and in his frequent videos the Egyptian militant often lays down the network's doctrinal line.
In the new video, he seemed to be playing both roles, speaking in front of shelves lined with Islamic books, an automatic rifle leaning against the shelves.
Al-Zawahri railed against Islamic clerics who don't advocate holy war and spoke about progress in numerous fronts of jihad — including Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Chechnya and North Africa.
He called for jihad in North Africa to "cleanse (it) of the children of France and Spain." And he urged more fighting in Sudan to drive out a planned U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force in the Darfur region, where Arab militiamen have been accused of committing atrocities against ethnic African communities.
The video showed scenes of al-Qaida's leader in Afghanistan, Mustafa Abu al-Yazeed, meeting with a senior Taliban commander. In contrast to past videos that showed al-Qaida and Taliban fighters in desert terrain, Abu al-Yazeed and the commander sat in a verdant field surrounded by trees as a jihad anthem played, extolling the virgins that will meet martyrs in paradise.
On the video, Abu al-Yazeed said al-Qaida's ties with the Taliban were strengthening. The Taliban commander, Dadullah Mansoor, vowed to "target the infidels in Afghanistan and outside Afghanistan" and to "focus our attacks, Allah willing, on the coalition forces in Afghanistan."

U.S. commander: Violence down in Baghdad

BAGHDAD - The No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq said Thursday that a seven-month-old security operation has cut violence in Baghdad by half, but he acknowledged that civilians were still dying at too high a rate.

The comments came as relations between the U.S. and Iraqi governments remained strained in the wake of Sunday's shooting involving Blackwater USA security guards, which Iraqi officials said left at least 11 people dead. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki suggested the U.S. Embassy find another company to protect its diplomats.
The Moyock, N.C.-based company has said its employees acted "lawfully and appropriately" in response to an armed attack against a State Department convoy.
But a survivor who said he was three cars away from the convoy denied the American guards were under fire, claiming they apparently started shooting to disperse more than two dozen cars that were stuck in a traffic jam.
"It is not true when they say that they were attacked. We did not hear any gunshots before they started shooting," lawyer Hassan Jabir told The Associated Press from his hospital bed.
On Thursday, Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno told reporters that car bombs and suicide attacks in Baghdad have fallen to their lowest level in a year, and civilian casualties have dropped from a high of about 32 to 12 per day.
He also said violence in Baghdad had seen a 50 percent decrease, although he did not provide details about how the numbers were obtained and said that was short of the military's objectives.
"What we do know is that there has been a decline in civilian casualties, but I would say again that it's not at the level we want it to be," Odierno said. "There are still way too many civilian casualties inside of Baghdad and Iraq."
Al-Qaida in Iraq was "increasingly being pushed out of Baghdad, "seeking refuge outside" the capital and "even fleeing Iraq," Odierno said.
Lt. Gen. Abboud Qanbar, the Iraqi military commander, said that before the troop buildup, one-third of Baghdad's 507 districts were under insurgent control.
"Now, only five to six districts can be called hot areas," he said. "Al-Qaida now is left only with booby-trapped cars and roadside bombs as their only weapons, which cannot be called quality operations, and they do not worry us."
Qanbar also reported the release of 1,686 detainees from Iraqi jails.
Odierno said the U.S. military had separately released at least 50 detainees per day, or a total of at least 250, since beginning an amnesty program for inmates as a goodwill gesture linked to the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
Meanwhile, an Iranian officer accused of smuggling powerful roadside bombs into Iraq was arrested Thursday, the military said. The suspect — a member of the Quds Force, an elite unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards — was detained in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah, the military said.
He was allegedly involved in transporting roadside bombs, including armor-piercing explosively formed penetrators, or EFPs, into Iraq, according to a statement. It said intelligence reports also indicated he was involved in the infiltration and training of foreign fighters into Iraq.
Officials have said the Bush administration is expected to blacklist the Quds force as a terrorist organization, subjecting part of the vast military operation to financial sanctions.
After the shooting Sunday in the Mansour district of western Baghdad, Blackwater spokeswoman Anne E. Tyrrell said the employees acted "lawfully and appropriately" in response to an armed attack against a U.S. State Department convoy.
But Iraqi witnesses claim seeing Blackwater security guards fire at civilians randomly.
Speaking from his bed in the Yarmouk hospital four days after the incident, Jabir said he was one of the wounded when Blackwater's security guards opened fire in Nisoor Square.
Jabir, who was identified by hospital officials as a survivor of the Blackwater incident, said he was stuck in a traffic jam near Nisoor Square in western Baghdad when he saw the American convoy of armored vehicles and black SUVs parked about 20 yards away at an intersection, apparently following an explosion.
Jabir said the Americans began yelling to disperse the vehicles, then opened fire as the cars were trying to turn around.
"Some people, including women and children, left their cars and began crawling on the street to avoid being shot but many of them were killed. I saw a 10-year-old boy jumping in fear from one of the minibuses and he was shot in his head. His mother jumped after him and was also killed," Jabir said, adding that his car flipped over in the chaos.
As Jabir spoke, an Iraqi interior ministry delegation arrived to document his account.
The shooting incident has angered Iraqis, uniting them in blaming U.S. forces for the violence in their country and backing the government's announcement to ban Blackwater from Iraq.
Al-Maliki, who disputed Blackwater's version of what happened, spoke out sharply against the company, saying the government would not tolerate the killing of its citizens "in cold blood."
U.S. and Iraqi officials announced they would form a joint committee to try to reconcile widely differing versions of the incident. Conflicting accounts were circulating among Iraqi officials themselves.
In Anbar province west of Baghdad, meanwhile, a U.S. soldier died Wednesday in a non-combat incident, the military said, adding that the incident was under investigation.
A car bombing at an Iraqi checkpoint in Baghdad's Sadr City neighborhood killed two Iraqi soldiers and a civilian, and wounded seven others. A roadside bomb struck an Iraqi police patrol near a stadium in eastern Baghdad, killing one officer and wounding five people.
Also Thursday, the chief judge of the mostly Shiite Karrada district court and his driver were shot by masked gunmen in eastern Baghdad. Both died of their wounds later in a hospital, police said.
In the northern city of Mosul, gunmen broke into the office of a chieftain of an alliance of Iraqi tribes, Sheik Farhan Birjis Adel al-Sindi, and fatally shot him, police said.
Meanwhile, the U.S. military said seven Shiite extremists were detained following a pre-dawn raid by Iraqi special forces and U.S. troops in Sadr City. Residents claimed a civilian and a 5-year-old boy were killed in the raid.

IAEA chief warns against striking Iran

By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press Writer
VIENNA, Austria - Invoking the war in Iraq, the chief U.N. nuclear inspector criticized talk of attacking Iran as "hype" on Monday, saying the use of force should only be considered as a last resort and only if authorized by the U.N. Security Council.

"I would not talk about any use of force," said Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in an indirect response to French warnings that the world had to be prepared for the possibility of war in the event that Iran obtains atomic weapons.
Saying only the U.N. Security Council could authorize the use of force, ElBaradei urged the world to remember Iraq before considering any similar action against Iran.
"There are rules on how to use force, and I would hope that everybody would have gotten the lesson after the Iraq situation, where 700,000 innocent civilians have lost their lives on the suspicion that a country has nuclear weapons," he told reporters.
He was alluding to a key U.S. argument for invading Iraq in 2003 without Security Council approval_ that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear arms. Four years later, no such arsenals have been found.
ElBaradei, speaking outside a 144-nation meeting of his agency, urged both sides to back away from confrontation, in comments addressed both to Iran and the U.S.-led group of nations pressing for new U.N. sanctions for Iran's refusal to end uranium enrichment.
"We need to be cool," he said, adding: "We need not to hype the issue".
On Sunday, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner warned that the world should prepare for war if Iran obtains nuclear weapons and said European leaders were considering their own economic sanctions against the Islamic country.
Negotiations and two sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions have failed to persuade Iran to stop its uranium enrichment program, a process that can produce fuel for nuclear power plants as well as material used in atomic weapons.
Iran insists its atomic activities are aimed only at producing energy, but the U.S., its European allies and other world powers suspect Iranian authorities of seeking nuclear weapons.
Kouchner, speaking on RTL radio, said that if "such a bomb is made... We must prepare ourselves for the worst," he said, specifying that could mean a war.
The United States, too has refused to rule out the possibility of force against Iran if it continues to defy Security Council demands on enrichment. Still, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Sunday the U.S. administration is committed, for now, to using diplomatic and economic means to counter the potential nuclear threat from Iran.
"I think that the administration believes at this point that continuing to try and deal with the Iranian threat, the Iranian challenge, through diplomatic and economic means is by far the preferable approach. That's the one we are using," the Pentagon chief said.
Iran does not directly figure on the agenda of the IAEA general conference, which opened a five-day meeting Monday. Still comments, both inside and outside the plenary hall reflected the world's concerns over the country's nuclear aims.
In comments alluding to the U.S. and its Western allies, Iranian Vice President Reza Aghazadeh accused unnamed countries of forcing the international community onto the "unjustified, illegal, deceptive and misleading path ... by imposing restrictions and sanctions."
And he again ruled out scrapping Iran's uranium enrichment program, telling delegates Iran would "never give up its inalienable and legal right in benefiting from peaceful nuclear technology."
ElBaradei, architect of a recent pact committing Iran to stop stonewalling his experts and lift the shroud of secrecy on past suspicious nuclear work, defended the agreement against criticism it could be used by Tehran as a smoke screen to draw attention from its defiance of the Security Council.
"What we need to do is encourage Iran to work with the agency to clarify the outstanding issues," he said.
"I do not believe at this stage that we are facing a clear and present danger that require we go beyond diplomacy," ElBaradei said, adding that his agency had no information that "the Iran program is being weaponized."
Alluding to Western criticism that he was being too soft on Iran, ElBaradei said: If "in time of hype telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act ... I will continue to be a revolutionary."