Us Troops Die At Increased Rate In

US Troops Die at Increased Rate in Iraq
Two PUK Employees Killed in Mosul

USA Today reports that the death rate for US troops in Iraq rose by about a third during the past year over the previous year.

The LA Times reports on the humanitarian implications of US military operations in Anbar province, for the displaced townspeople caught in the fighting. It also reports:

‘ In Baghdad, gunmen killed the cousin of national security adviser Mowafak al-Rubaie. The victim, Taher Kadhem al-Rubayee, was working at his eyeglass shop in the Ameriyah district last night when gunmen stormed in and killed him, an employee, and three customers, an interior ministry official said.

In Baqubah, 45 miles north of the capital, gunmen in a Daewoo sedan attempted to assassinate Colonel Shalaan Abdul-Khaleq, head of the city’s elite Rapid Intervention Force. The colonel’s brother and two civilians were killed in ensuing hourlong gunfight. Khaleq was severely wounded.

In Hawija, a Sunni-dominated city southwest of Kirkuk, an Iraqi Army officer who was kidnapped Tuesday was found dead, police said. ‘

Mariam Karouny explores the ways in which Kirkuk’s oil riches have not actually translated into it being a wealthy city.

FBIS translates the following report:

‘ Two Patriotic Union of Kurdistan Employees Killed in Iraq’s Mosul
KURDSAT
Thursday, June 30, 2005 T14:10:27Z
Journal Code: 8060 Language: ENGLISH Record Type: FULLTEXT
Document Type: FBIS Translated Text
Word Count: 80

Two employees of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) Coordination Center in Mosul were killed this morning in Al-Bakr area in the city. The victims are two sisters called Narmin Husayn Rahman and Namam Husayn Rahman. They were murdered while on their way from home to work, at the PUK Naynawa Center. They were two loyal and bright employees serving their nation.

(Description of Source: Al-Sulaymaniyah KurdSat in Sorani Kurdish –Iraqi Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) satellite TV)

Compiled and distributed by NTIS, US Dept. of Commerce. All rights reserved.
City/Source: Al-Sulaymaniyah ‘

Meanwhile, FBIS also translated the Baath Party of Iraq’s reaction to George W. Bush’s speech on Iraq:

‘ Iraqi Ba’th Party Reacts to Bush Speech . . .”
FBIS Translation
AL-QUDS AL-‘ARABI
Thursday, June 30, 2005 T13:12:26Z

London, Al-Quds al-Arabi–Reacting to President Bush’s speech, the (Iraqi) Ba’th Party has issued a statement stressing that the initiative is in its hand and that the armed confrontation will continue and escalate until liberation.

The statement said the strategic initiative is in the Ba’th’s hand and its repercussions are demonstrated by the political, security, and moral fighting against the occupation, its agents, and after them the Arab regimes that are integrated in the occupation’s political and security plans in occupied Iraq.

It stressed that the Ba’th has made the US administration face successive failed political stands in occupied Iraq so that this administration has become, firstly, the prisoner of these failed stands and, secondly, the repercussions of these stands are impacting on its agents and traitorous authority in occupied Iraq. It added that the US occupation presence in Iraq is moving from a political and strategic crisis to the stage of entering the state of total collapse.

Addressing the Iraqis, the Arab nation’s sons, humanity’s free, the Ba’thists, the resistance fighters, and the mujahidin, it stressed that the resistance is continuing and escalating and that the process will take its required time and over a period of time that the resistance action requires in an intermediary targeting stage for destroying the agent authority with its structures and persons and which precedes the routing and defeat of the US occupation and the humiliation of its armed forces.

The statement went on to say that the political and security achievements that the US President keeps reiterating are in fact failed political stands and frequent and constant security defeats. President Bush addressed the American people and their armed forces with new excuses that linked the justification for non-withdrawal or its timetable “to the global war on terror” and the need to continue it. It stressed that continuing the fight according to Bush’s justifications and his defense secretary’s expectations is attributed to the factor of the preponderance of the armed resistance choice, which will not subside until Iraq is liberated and which was formulated by the Ba’th and adopted by the Iraqi resistance, over the collapse and retreat of the original excuses for the aggression and the occupation.

It added that the Iraqi armed resistance’s calculations are not linked in the first place to Bush’s failed war on “terror” because his war on terror has become an invalid excuse that the American people and their armed forces will discover in record time as a result of the constant defeat that the Ba’th and Iraqi resistance are inflicting on the US occupation forces in the battle to liberate all of Iraq.

(Description of Source: London Al-Quds al-Arabi in Arabic — London-based independent Arab nationalist daily . . .) ‘