9 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Sunni Strongholds
ARAB HAMADAH, Iraq — In one of the deadliest stretches for American troops in months, militants killed nine soldiers in the volatile Sunni Arab heartlands north of Baghdad on Tuesday and Wednesday as the military began its third offensive in a year to dislodge Sunni guerrillas from sanctuaries deep within the lush farmlands and palm groves of Diyala Province.
Six of the American soldiers were killed Wednesday at an unspecified location in Diyala in part of the offensive when insurgents detonated a large bomb hidden in a house. Four other soldiers were wounded, and an interpreter of unknown nationality was killed.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/10/world/middleeast/10iraq.html151,000 civilians killed since Iraq invasion
An estimated 151,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the violence that has engulfed the country from the time of the US-led invasion until June 2006, according to the latest and largest study of deaths officially accepted by the Iraqi government.
The figures come from a household survey carried out by the World Health Organisation and the Iraqi health ministry. They are substantially lower than the 601,027 death toll reported by US researchers in 2006 in the Lancet using similar study methods, but higher than the Iraq Body Count's (IBC) register - based on press reports - of 47,668.
The authors of the WHO/Iraqi study, published last night in the New England Journal of Medicine, say that the new number, which could be anywhere between 104,000 and 223,000 allowing for misreporting, "points to a massive death toll in the wake of the 2003 invasion and represents only one of the many health and human consequences of an ongoing humanitarian crisis".
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,2238250,00.html