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US military losses in Iraq crossed the 3,000 mark with the death of three airmen in Baghdad amid reports that another 20,000 troops will be rushed to stabilise the violence-wracked capital.
According to the New York Times, the extra troops are expected to be part of a revised security plan announced by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki on Saturday.
The US military announced the the death of three airmen in a roadside bombing in Baghdad, taking its total losses in Iraq to 3,003 since the March 2003 invasion to topple Saddam Hussein, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.
Earlier on Sunday it announced the death of a soldier, also in the capital, which took US losses to the 3,000 mark.
Of the fatalities, 2,418 were killed in combat and 585 died from “non-hostile” causes, according to the Pentagon. More than 22,700 have been wounded.
Of the 3,003 dead, only 139 died during the actual invasion between March 19 and April 30, 2003. Most deaths were in the Sunni Arab insurgency that followed the US-led occupation.
The Pentagon said some 44 percent of US casualties were from roadside bombs, or improvised explosive devices (IEDs) as the military calls them.
Small-arms fire, including from snipers, accounted for just under 20 percent of the casualties.
The bulk of losses have been in the restive Sunni province of Al-Anbar — a hotbed of the insurgency — with battleground cities including Ramadi, Fallujah and a string of smaller towns along the Euphrates valley.
After Anbar, Baghdad has emerged as the most dangerous battlefield for US forces.
To secure the city, Bush is now expected to send 20,000 more troops even if it means running the risk of further casualties, the New York Times said.
Maliki, according to the report, has agreed to send three more Iraqi brigades to Baghdad over the next 45 days to support the “surge” in the around 132,000-strong US garrison in Iraq.
Bush's new strategy, to be rolled out in a televised address possibly as soon as Wednesday, follows weeks of introspection for his administration after Democrats routed Republicans in November's congressional elections.
Iraqi and US forces implemented a joint security plan in June 2006 that has failed to bring stability to Baghdad, where the United Nations says more than 100 people are killed daily.
On Sunday, another nine people were killed in Baghdad, a security official said. Elsewhere in Iraq, six more dead were reported.
Meanwhile, UN chief Ban Ki-moon urged Iraq government to suspend executing two of Saddam's henchmen after the bungled hanging of the ousted dictator eight days ago.
Ban “strongly urged the government of Iraq to grant a stay of execution to those whose death sentences may be carried out in the near future,” a UN statement said Saturday.
Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Awad Ahmed al-Bandar are expected to be hanged soon. They were found guilty along with Saddam of killing 148 Shiite civilians from Dujail, north of Baghdad, in the 1980s.
Government spokesman Ali Dabbagh told the BBC's Arabic service that he expected the executions to go a head in “the next two days.”
A lawyer for the pair said they had been told they were being readied for the gallows on the day of Saddam's execution and added that their wait on death row was “more terrifying” than the death penalty itself.
“This sort of wait is frightening and more terrifying than the execution itself. Had it happened in any other country the execution would have been scrapped,” said Issam Ghazzawi in Amman.
Saddam's December 30 hanging sparked an outcry after the leak of an unofficial, grisly cellphone video of his execution that showed a guard taunting him moments before his death.
Protests and criticism against his execution continue.
In the Sunni town of Samarra where a revered Shiite shrine was bombed last February triggering nationwide sectarian violence, hundreds of Sunni Arabs gathered outside the mosque on Sunday to protest against the hanging.
British Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown became the latest world leader to criticise the execution, calling it “deplorable”.
“It is something, of course, which the Iraqi government has now expressed its anxiety and shame at. It has done nothing to lessen tensions between the Shia and Sunni communities,” said Brown — Prime Minister Tony Blair's heir apparent.
Blair himself is expected to criticise the hanging, his spokeswoman said Sunday.
Blair “does believe that the manner of execution was completely wrong, but this shouldn't lead us to forget the crimes that Saddam committed, including the death of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis,” she said.
