June 19, 2013

Posts Comments

You are here: Home / Archives for combat deaths

Taliban announce start of spring offensive

April 27, 2013 By Leave a Comment

98b3f3bbc0715f73e43492e10d53598a Taliban announce start of spring offensive

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — The Taliban on Saturday announced the start of their spring offensive, signaling plans to step up attacks as the weather warms across Afghanistan, making both travel and fighting easier.

The statement comes toward the end of a month that already has been the deadliest of the year.

The ’s leadership vowed that “every possible will be utilized in order to detain or inflict on the foreign transgressors.”

It said that will include more so-called by members of the Afghan against their colleagues or foreign troops.

Such attacks threaten the strength of the Afghan forces as they work to take over responsibility from international forces. The latest one occurred in March, when a member of Afghanistan’s government-backed militia program shot and killed five of his colleagues in Badghis province in northwest Afghanistan.

In a sign of Taliban’s determination to replace Afghanistan’s government with one promoting a stricter interpretation of Islamic law, they named their new offensive after a legendary Muslim , Khalid ibn al-Walid. Also known as “the Drawn Sword of God,” he was a companion of Islam’s .

U.S.-backed efforts to try to reconcile the Islamic militant movement with the Afghan government have so far failed.

intensified attacks this spring as they try to position themselves for power ahead of and the planned withdrawal of most U.S. and other foreign combat troops by the end of 2014.

April has already been the worst month for so far this year. According to an Associated Press tally, 257 people — including civilians, Afghan security forces and foreign troops — have been killed in violence around the nation. During that time 217 insurgents have died.

Last year during the month of April, 179 civilians, foreign troops and Afghan security forces were killed and 268 insurgents.

Still, the top U.S. commander in Kabul, Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, said Wednesday that the security situation has improved across the country.

“As the traditional fighting season begins, the insurgency will confront a combined ” Afghan force of 350,000 soldiers and police, he said.

“The insurgency can no longer use the justification that it is fighting foreign occupiers — that message rings hollow,” Dunford said in a statement.

Share|

Related Links:

  • No Related Links
Filed Under: Featured, World Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

U.S. troop toll in Afghanistan falls with strategy shift

February 23, 2013 By Leave a Comment

ieddust U.S. troop toll in Afghanistan falls with strategy shift

(PhatzNewsRoom / Security) — For the past month, the U.S. military has experienced something not seen for five years in Afghanistan: No .

Three U.S. troops have died from hostile fire injuries since Jan. 1, and one of them succumbed to wounds sustained in December.

The trend marks the longest period without a U.S. in America’s since 2008, and clearly reflects a strategy shift that leaves much of the fighting to Afghan security forces, whose deaths are going up.

Afghans now lead more than 80% of combat operations and control areas covering more than three-quarters of the population, according to U.S. military officials.

The U.S. military has pulled back from direct combat operations into the less dangerous role of advising and assisting Afghan forces.

American military officials said a cut in the number of American forces is another reason for the decline.

There were about 100,000 forces in Afghanistan during the peak of the military’s troop surge. But that number fell by almost 40 percent when the last of those troops left in September and remains at about that level today.

Attacks by Taliban also have declined, officials have said.

Just as the U.S. toll has dropped, Afghan security force deaths have risen sharply.

“The Taliban are targeting the Afghan Army and police to try and show the populous the Afghan Security Forces cannot adequately protect them,” said Col. David , spokesman for the of Staff.

“They are trying to undermine the future of the (Afghan Security Forces),” he said.

Having reached their peak of 352,000 last year, more Afghan security forces will also bring more casualties as well, according to .

“They really have taken on the bulk of the and have been dying in very significant numbers as compared to their U.S. counterparts over the last three months,” said , a senior analyst on Afghanistan with the Washington-based institute for the Study of War.

Last year was the deadliest so far for Afghan forces with more than 3,400 soldiers and police killed, up from 1,950 the previous year, according to a Brookings Institute study.

Some 237 U.S. troops were killed by hostile fire in 2012, down from 351 the previous year, according to Pentagon statistics.

While Afghan security force fatalities are up, a new report by the United Nations on Tuesday shows civilian deaths on the decline.

Civilian deaths in Afghanistan dropped 12% in 2012 – the first time that figure has fallen in six years, according to the U.N. Assistance Mission to Afghanistan (UNAMA).

The report credits the decline to fewer suicide bombings, a drop in aerial attacks and less ground fighting between pro-government and militant forces.

The U.S.-led NATO military force has put strict limits on air strikes by coalition aircraft called in by NATO troops.

Last week, Afghan President Hamid Karzai banned Afghan security forces from calling in allied air strikes after at least 10 civilians were killed during an Afghan-led operation in eastern Kunar province earlier this month.

Share|

Related Links:

  • No Related Links
Filed Under: Breaking News, World Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Military looks for ways to save more lives on battlefield

June 30, 2012 By Leave a Comment

47c92514aa03d89299ebd3beecfa9294 Military looks for ways to save more lives on battlefield

( News / ) — FREDERICK, Md. – About one of every four U.S. servicemembers killed in Iraq or Afghanistan in the past decade — about 1,000 people — could have survived with more advanced combat medicine on the battlefield, according to an Army study.

In 90% of those cases, servicemembers bled to death, something medics and corpsmen with the right tools and training might prevent, Army Col. Brian Eastridge said in presenting study results last week to a Pentagon advisory panel here.

“It’s a tremendous amount of people we’re losing before they even reach medical care,” Eastridge, a , told the Defense Health Board meeting at Fort Detrick.

New ways of saving these lives include delivering blood products to casualties soon after they are wounded, drugs that control and devices that clamp off major severed arteries, retired Navy Butler, a second trauma expert, told the panel.

U.S. troops have a 90% chance of surviving wounds, higher than in any previous American war. Eastridge, Butler and other military trauma specialists said the success rate could be even higher with better tools.

“We have made advancements,” Eastridge said. “We have made improvements. But we need to look at all of the deaths to see if there is anything we can do to even further improve combat casualty care.”

The analysis by the U.S. Army Institute of Surgical Research and the Armed Forces Medical Examiner Services analyzed records on every American from 9/11 through last year, 4,596 cases. The number excludes war-zone deaths because of illness.

About 1,400 were instantaneous, most caused by exposure to a blast, the study found. An additional 2,700 victims survived for a time but died before reaching a doctor. Of those, 1,075 might have been saved, according to the analysis.

That number included more than 300 deaths where the servicemember would have had a 70% chance or better of survival if he or she had reached a doctor.

Eastridge said the analysis did not take into consideration extenuating circumstances such as the difficulty of evacuating a casualty during a firefight or the distance and weather that might impede helicopter delivery to a treatment center.

Among hundreds of cases where a servicemember bled to death, the vast majority involved hemorrhaging from wounds in areas of the body where standard battlefield blood-loss control devices, such as a tourniquet, are ineffective.

In 675 of those combat deaths where survival might have been possible with more sophisticated care, troops bled to death from wounds to the trunk of the body, the analysis shows.

New ways for combat medics or Navy corpsmen to restore lost blood, induce clotting or stem massive bleeding are needed, Eastridge said.

The key, he explained, is keeping the soldier or Marine alive from the moment he or she is wounded until the casualty arrives at a field hospital, where chances of recovery improve dramatically.

“That’s why we did this study,” Eastridge says. “It’s really about developing a (research and development) strategy so that we can address these problems for the end of this war and the war of the future.”

Share|

Related Links:

  • No Related Links
Filed Under: Featured, World Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Suicides No. 2 cause of death in military

June 14, 2012 By Leave a Comment

8fc89386589c1d9515ebe2d8ba3ac6af Suicides No. 2 cause of death in military

(Phatforums News / ) — The most common way that U.S. die outside of combat is by their own hand, according to an analysis released by the Pentagon on Wednesday.

Since 2010, suicide has outpaced traffic accidents, , cancer, and all other forms of death in the military besides combat, the report says. One in four non- last year were servicemembers killing themselves.

This year, suicides among troops occur on average once a day, according to Pentagon figures obtained by USA TODAY. The data, first reported by the Associated Press, show that after the end of the , suicides may become more common than combat deaths.

There were 154 confirmed or suspected suicides this year through June 3, while 127 troops died in the , Pentagon data show.

Leon Panetta told Congress on Wednesday that he has directed all “to immediately look at that situation and determine what’s behind it, what’s causing it and what can we do to make sure it doesn’t happen.”

On a related issue, Panetta revealed Wednesday that he will have all service branches follow the Army’s lead in reviewing mental health cases dating to 2001. The goal is to see whether any current or former servicemember was denied appropriate medical .

Last year, 26% of military deaths occurred in combat, 20% by suicide and 17% in traffic accidents. The percentage of suicides is up from 10% in 2005.

All the services except the Navy are seeing increases in suicide among active-duty members this year. All have studied the issue. The Army — which has the highest suicide rate, on par with the civilian rate — is spending about $75 million to understand why it is happening and what to do about it.

No one so far has answers, said Army Col. Carl Castro, who leads researchers trying to find effective forms of prevention and treatment.

“We were slow to react (at first) because we weren’t sure if it was an anomaly or it was a real trend,” Castro said. “Then it just takes time to program the money and get the studies up and going.”

All the services introduced suicide prevention programs based on promising ideas, Castro said, but none is rooted in scientific research.

“Everything we do in suicide prevention, there’s no evidence it works,” Castro said.

Castro said the research efforts, among the first of their kind in the nation on suicide, could begin producing findings in the months ahead.

Panetta said suicide is “one of the most complex and urgent problems” he faces. “Commanders cannot tolerate any actions that belittle, haze, humiliate or ostracize any individual, especially those who require or are responsibly seeking professional services,” Panetta wrote.

80bc36bff2b631197dd4d204dc64e642 Suicides No. 2 cause of death in military

Share|

Related Links:

  • No Related Links
Filed Under: Featured, World Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,