Zero U.S. Troops Died In Combat In March, The First Month Since 2003

Think Progress reports that there were “zero U.S. fatalities among American troops engaging in combat, according to numbers from the Department of Defense.“

This was the first time since the launch of the war in Iraq in 2003.

After a decade at war in the post-9/11 environment, with major wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and smaller conflicts in the various other countries where the U.S. uses more covert methods to fight against terrorism, the lack of combat deaths in March 2014 marks a milestone. In Iraq, the death toll reached 4,474 before the last soldier fell in November 2011. For years after the war’s launch in 2003, no months passed where at least one American didn’t die in battle and then only towards the end of the conflict did the numbers taper off enough to have a month where the only fatalities were non-combat related.

Additionally, NBC reports that according to a NATO press release, March marks the first month in over seven years that there were no deaths of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan. Two coalition soldiers were killed in Afghanistan in March, but neither were considered to be related to the battle mission.

According to data on the website iCasualties.org, which tracks deaths and injuries among coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq, the last two times the U.S. military went an entire month without casualties in any theater of Operation Enduring Freedom were in July of 2002 and January of 2007.

Additional figures collected by iCasualties.org reports the number of soldiers killed in combat during Operation Enduring Freedom – the U.S. war in Afghanistan – includes casualties that occurred in Guantanamo Bay (Cuba), Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.

According to Think Progress,

“The worst single month for U.S. forces in that conflict was July 2010, amid the summer fighting season, during which 65 Americans died. At that point, 98,000 American forces were stationed in Afghanistan amid the surge of 30,000 additional soldiers into the country. To date, 3,481 U.S. military personnel have lost their life in Afghanistan.”

NOTE: We do understand that there might be a conflict between the reports from NATO and from the DOD, but we assume that has to do with their definitions for “engaging in conflict” versus as the result of combat. We are not sure, just reporting what we found between the four sources linked in the article, above.

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