U.S. Combat Fatalities in Iraq Surge Suddenly

BAGHDAD —  After a period of weeks in which the number of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq had been decreasing, a spate of bombings over the last five days has killed nine troops, including a National Guard soldier who had just arrived in the country.

It was too early to tell if the attacks since Wednesday signaled a trend. In recent months, the pace of American combat fatalities has diminished -- although there have been several massive bombings directed against Iraqi police and Shiite pilgrims.

According to Pentagon reports, 47 U.S. soldiers died in Iraq in January, slightly more than the 40 recorded in December but far less than the 82 recorded in November. The figure fell to 20 deaths in February.

In the first 14 days of March, however, 15 U.S. service personnel were killed, as well as two American civilians working for the U.S.-led occupation authority who were reportedly chased in their car near Karbala and killed by a group that allegedly included Iraqi policemen.

The chief military spokesman here, Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, said it was “too early to divine a pattern yet.”

“I think it is more of a cluster than it is a pattern,” he said of the recent number of deaths.

He also said it would be wrong to ascribe the casualties to the arrival of fresh, less-tested troops, noting that most of the nine killed since Wednesday were in units long based in Iraq. The U.S. military is in the midst of a massive troop rotation that will continue through May.

Kimmitt said the military had been hesitant to declare the decrease in the number of casualties since November a sign of progress, recognizing that it might be reversed. Attacks on U.S. troops have been holding steady at between 18 and 22 per day for the last few months, he said.

In the worst of the recent attacks, a bomb exploded Saturday night in southeastern Baghdad, killing three Americans and wounding one. That was followed by a blast Sunday morning that killed the newly arrived National Guard soldier.

In addition, two 1st Infantry Division soldiers were killed and three were wounded Saturday in Tikrit. A roadside explosive detonated, and attackers followed with a fusillade of gunfire on the division’s three-vehicle convoy. The 1st Infantry has recently taken over control of north-central Iraq from the 4th Infantry Division.

Three U.S. soldiers died in bomb attacks north and west of Baghdad on Wednesday and Thursday.

The identities of those killed Saturday and Sunday have not been released, pending notification of relatives. But the Pentagon has identified those killed in the earlier actions.

Staff Sgt. Joe L. Dunigan Jr., 37, of Belton, Texas, and Spc. Christopher K. Hill, 26, of Ventura died Thursday when their vehicle was hit by an improvised explosive device near Fallouja, the mainly Sunni Muslim town west of Baghdad that has been a hotspot of guerrilla activity.

Pfc. Bert. E. Hoyer, 23, of Ellsworth, Wis., was killed Wednesday when a bomb hit a convoy in Baqubah, north of the capital.

In Washington on Sunday, national security advisor Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld stood by prewar assertions that Iraq posed an “imminent threat” to the United States despite recent assertions by the Bush administration’s CIA director and its top Iraq weapons tracker that no weapons of mass destruction appear to have existed at that time.

“We all believed that it is an urgent threat, and I believe to this day that it was an urgent threat,” Rice said of Iraq on NBC’s “Meet the Press” television program. “And we are safer as a result, because today Iraq is no longer going to be a state of weapons-of-mass-destruction concern.”

Rumsfeld at first reiterated his claim that neither he nor President Bush called Iraq an imminent threat.

But he elaborated after being confronted with his Sept. 19, 2002, statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee, when he said, “There are a number of terrorist states pursuing weapons of mass destruction, but no terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people than the regime of Saddam Hussein and Iraq.”

Rumsfeld said he believed that illicit weapons might still be found. “It’s a country the size of California,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “He could have hidden ... enough biological weapons in the hole that we found Saddam Hussein in to kill tens of thousands of people. So it’s not as though we have certainty today.”

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John Hendren of The Times’ Washington Bureau contributed to this report.