Total foreign military deaths in Afghanistan have passed 2,000 since the war began in late 2001, unofficial tallies showed on Sunday, more than 60 percent of them Americans but still far behind ever-growing civilian casualties.
The deaths of at least one more US service member, an Australian and a Briton announced in the past two days have pushed the total to 2,002 since the Taliban were ousted in late 2001 by US-backed Afghan forces.
The total is less than half that suffered during the seven years of the Iraq war but is a significant milestone nonetheless, with Nato allies like the Netherlands pulling out of the alliance and others reviewing their future roles. It will also likely be an unwelcome figure for US President Barack Obama, who has promised a strategy review in December after mid-term elections a month earlier in which his Democrats face a backlash from an increasingly sceptical public.
According to www.iCasualties.org, an independent website that monitors foreign troop deaths, 2002 troops have been killed since 2001, 1,226 of them Americans. British losses total 331, with the remaining 445 shared among the other 44 Nato partners in the International Security Assistance Force.
Many more foreign soldiers have been wounded in a conflict Obama has described as a war of "necessity" US, British and other Nato commanders have warned the battle will only get tougher this year as foreign troops push ahead with plans to take control of Taliban strongholds in the south and confront other insurgents such as the al Qaeda-linked Haqqani network in the east. June 2010 was the bloodiest month of the war with 102 killed as foreign forces pushed ahead with operations in southern Helmand and Kandahar provinces.
Another 88 were killed in July, with total for the year so far standing at 434, according to iCasualties, fast approaching 2009's 521. The increasing death toll comes as the number of foreign troops in Afghanistan grows towards 150,000 after Obama committed another 30,000 to the fight this year. The losses in Afghanistan are less than half of those in the Iraq war, where at least 4,723 foreign troops have been killed since 2003, 4,405 of them American.
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