A Sept. 30 checkpoint shooting in eastern Afghanistan's Wardak province brought the US military's death toll in the war past 2,000, by official count. A report by the Brookings Institution (PDF [5]) estimates that 40.2% of US deaths were caused by improvised explosive devices and 30.3% by gun attacks. The independent organization iCasualties [6] estimates a higher US death toll, recording 2,125 to date. This same source reports 1,066 deaths of non-US coalition troops in Afghanistan. (BBC News [7], Sept. 30) Note that the US military death toll reached 1,000 in 2010 [8]—a grim indication of how the rate of US casualties is growing. The death toll for Afghan civilians last year alone topped 3,000 [9]—lives claimed by both insurgent and coalition forces. Afghan civilian death (at that point mostly at the hands of US bombardment) topped 3,000 by the end of 2001 [10]. The figure, poetically, is the same as the death toll from 9-11.
The US military death toll in Iraq reached 4,000 in 2008 [11], and currently stands at 4,486 according to iCasualties [11], with the total coalition death toll at 4,804. The combined US death toll in Afghanistan and Iraq surpassed 3,000 in 2006 [12].
