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McClatchy Newspapers WASHINGTON — The U.S. death toll in Iraq increased in January, ending a four-month drop in casualties, and most of the deaths occurred outside Baghdad or the once-restive Anbar province, according to military statistics.
In all, 38 American service members had been reported killed in January by Thursday evening, compared with 23 in December. Of those, 33 died from hostile action, but only nine of them in Baghdad or Anbar.
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U.S. officials in Iraq said the death toll had risen because the military was targeting armed groups that had been driven out of Baghdad and Anbar by the increase in American troops.
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The fact that more Americans have been killed in those provinces has some fretting that the U.S. is fighting another round of "whack-a-mole," a term that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., once used to describe chasing insurgents and terrorists from one part of Iraq to another.
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Earlier this month, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the commander of Multinational Division Central, which includes Baghdad, warned against pulling out U.S. troops too quickly.
"If you've got an area that you've taken away and you walk away from it, 96 hours later the enemy is back — and he's intimidating the population (and) he's killing innocent people," Lynch said. "So we have to manage this transition very diligently."
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