The death toll of US troops in Iraq has reached 2,000 with the deaths of two more soldiers yesterday, CNN said quoting Pentagon sources.
"The US military says two more marines have been killed," bringing the total number of US troops killed since the Iraq war began in March 2003 to 2,000, CNN said.
As of yesterday, however, the official Pentagon site providing the casualty toll of US troops in Iraq listed 1991 troops dead. The new death toll, which CNN described as "a milestone," coincides with the growing unpopularity of the Iraq war among Americans.
A Harris Interactive poll published Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal found that for the frst time, a majority of Americans (53 percent) believe the Iraq war was the "wrong thing to do."
Only hours before, the number of US military fatalities in Iraq reached 2,000, according to CNN, 44 percent of those polled said the situation for US troops in Iraq was getting worse, compared to 19 percent who thought it was improving.
Meanwhile, insurgents pressed a renewed offensive after a dramatic suicide strike on a hotel used by foreign journalists. Body parts were still strewn outside Baghdad's Sheraton and Palestine hotels following Monday's triple bombing which police said killed at least 12 people and injured 22.
Palestine hotel
Monday's attack on the Baghdad hotel complex, which lies across the Tigris from the heavily-fortified government "Green Zone" and serves as the base for several foreign media organizations, shook central Baghdad and sent columns of smoke and dust into the sky.
A first car detonated outside the hotels' perimeter wall on Firdous Square -- where in April 2003 US soldiers and Iraqis pulled down a huge statue of former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. About five minutes later a second car bomb approached the square and tried to maneuver through the breach but was engaged by civilian security forces, the military said in a statement.
It blew up on the far side of the square. Seconds later, an explosives-laden cement truck pushed through the broken wall and headed for the hotel, coming under fire from a US soldier, the military said. The truck then exploded, causing extensive damage to the Palestine Hotel lobby and hurtling chunks of debris hundreds of meters away.
Yesterday, police said a suicide car bomber targeted a US military convoy in the Mansour district of western Baghdad, killing a civilian. Another roadside bomb exploded near one of Baghdad's children's hospitals, killing one person and injuring another. Nine people were killed when a car bomb exploded in the northern city of Sulaimaniya.
Two US marines were killed when their vehicle was attacked by a roadside bomb, the military said yesterday.
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