U.S. death toll in Afghanistan nears 2000 troops

PanARMENIAN.Net - The U.S. military has suffered its 2,000th death in the Afghan war - with a suspected "insider" attack at a checkpoint in the east of the country, BBC News reported.

A U.S. soldier and a foreign contractor were killed while two Afghan soldiers died and four were injured.

The figure of 2,000 deaths was given by U.S. officials on Sunday, September 30. During the war in Iraq, 4,409 American soldiers were killed.

As of 27 September, the Pentagon's official military death toll for Afghanistan had stood at 1,996. The count includes both soldiers killed in action and soldiers who died of their injuries in hospital. The figure also covers 339 non-combat deaths.

A report by the Brookings Institution estimates that 40.2% of U.S. deaths were caused by improvised explosive devices and 30.3% by gun attacks. Officially, at least 17,644 U.S. soldiers have been wounded in action in Afghanistan.

The independent organisation iCasualties estimates a higher U.S. death toll, recording 2,125 to date.

This same source reports 1,066 deaths of non-U.S. members of the coalition in Afghanistan. Since the war began, 433 British soldiers have been killed.

It is more difficult to establish the Afghan toll in the war but most estimates calculate a minimum of 20,000 civilian deaths, AP notes.

Some 10,000 members of the Afghan security forces have been killed. No reliable figures exist for deaths among the Taliban and other insurgents.

Nato combat troops are set to withdraw by the end of 2014, but a central plank of the strategy is that foreign soldiers will serve alongside and train Afghans for many years to come.

Correspondents say that may not be realistic given the ever increasing number of Afghans who turn their weapons on their foreign allies.