Coalition death toll in Iraq hits 4,000

Coalition death toll in Iraq hits 4,000

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The number of coalition military deaths in the war in Iraq has reached 4,000.

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The gloomy milestone was reached as a U.S. general said there has been a rise in insurgents booby-trapping houses.

Most of the fatalities throughout the Iraq war have been U.S. military service members, with 3,705 deaths. That number also includes seven civilians working for the Pentagon.

The nearly 300 others hail from countries, such as Italy, Poland and Ukraine, that have supported the U.S. effort, which began in March 2003.

The numbers are based on a CNN Library count of official figures from the various countries involved in the Iraq war.

On Friday a roadside bombing killed a U.S. soldier in eastern Baghdad, the U.S. military said. Two others were wounded. They were all from Multi-National Division-Baghdad.

Three U.S. soldiers died in Baghdad on Thursday, the U.S. military said. Two of the dead died from a "non-battle related cause." In addition, a Task Force Lightning soldier was killed by enemy gunfire in Baghdad province.

Forty-six U.S. troops have died this month. Britain, which has command of coalition troops in southern Iraq, has suffered 168 deaths, 132 of them in hostile circumstances.

The United States has about 162,000 troops in Iraq; 11,500 are from other countries, the State Department says.

Next month, Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker are scheduled to present a progress report on Iraq to Congress.

While debate continues as to whether the deployment of more U.S. troops to Iraq is working, insurgents are stepping up their efforts by rigging bombs in houses that U.S. and Iraqi soldiers try to enter and clear. See a timeline of deadliest attacks in Iraq »

Lt. Gen. Carter Ham, director for operations for the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, described a few recent instances in which improvised explosive devices have gone off in buildings where there were U.S. and Iraqi soldiers.

"It has occurred in Baghdad and in other sites as well," Ham said.

The devices are set up like booby traps, but with a large explosive similar to those used in roadside bombs, he said. He does not know if any of the home booby traps have used armor-piercing devices.

Meanwhile, a coordinated attack against the Yazidi minority, which killed 500 civilians, was described by Maj. Gen. Benjamin Mixon as an attempt to influence U.S. public opinion.

Tuesday's truck bombs that targeted the villages of Qahtaniya, al-Jazeera and Tal Uzair, in northern Iraq near the border with Syria, were a "trademark al Qaeda event" designed to sway U.S. public opinion against the war, Mixon said Wednesday. Watch the grim aftermath of the suicide bombings

U.S. poll: Half don't trust upcoming Iraq report

He called the attacks on Kurdish villages of the Yazidi religious minority "ethnic cleansing." There has been very little security in the area where the bombs exploded, officials say. Sunni extremists have been blamed for the attacks.

Mixon said the car bombings were attempts to "break the will" of the American people and show that the U.S. troop escalation -- the "surge" -- is failing.

In another blast Thursday morning, a bomb in a parked car exploded at a busy shopping center in central Baghdad, killing at least nine people and wounding 17, Iraq's Ministry of Information said

In Diyala province Wednesday, the U.S. military reported 21 insurgents killed in an "unprecedented combined action" effort of Iraqi police and citizen volunteers.

The joint force of police and the volunteers, who call themselves the Baquba Guardians, "defeated a coordinated attack" by 40 to 60 "al Qaeda terrorists" in the southern Buhriz region near Baquba, the U.S. military said in a Thursday statement. Coalition attack helicopters backed up the fighters.

The U.S. military is leading two major offensives against Diyala insurgents -- Arrowhead Ripper in Baquba and Lightning Hammer in the Diyala River valley.

"Baquba should be proud of their security forces and their citizen guardians today," said Col. Steve Townsend, commander, 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division.

"All fought side-by-side and soundly defeated a complex attack from a determined enemy. This thing could have been much worse had those suicide bombers reached their targets."

"We still have a great deal of work to do against al Qaeda in Iraq, and we have great deal of work to do against al Qaeda networks in northern Iraq," Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, a Multi-National Force-Iraq spokesman, said Wednesday.

The number of U.S. military deaths stands at 3,705, and the number in August so far is 47, according to a CNN count of Pentagon figures.

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Poll: Majority mistrustful of upcoming Iraq reportStory Highlights

Fifty-three percent say they don't trust military assessment of situation in Iraq

Forty-three percent say they do trust report by U.S. Army's top general in Iraq

CNN polling director thinks mistrust is directed at Bush administration

About half think military making progress; a quarter think Iraqi government is

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- A majority of Americans don't trust the upcoming report by the Army's top commander in Iraq on the progress of the war and even if they did, it wouldn't change their mind, according to a new poll.

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President Bush frequently has asked Congress -- and the American people -- to withhold judgment on his so-called troop surge in Iraq until Gen. David Petraeus, the commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, issue their progress report in September.

But according to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll released Thursday, 53 percent of people polled said they suspect that the military assessment of the situation will try to make it sound better than it actually is. Forty-three percent said they do trust the report.

CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said he doesn't think the mistrust is directed at Petreaus as much as it is what he represents.

Holland said, "I suspect most people are hearing the words 'general' and 'Iraq' and that's what they're basing their opinion on."

He added, "It does seem to indicate that anyone associated with the Bush administration may be a less than credible messenger for the message that there is progress being made in Iraq."

Another interesting thing about the poll, Holland said, is that it indicates that about half of those surveyed -- 47 percent -- feel that the military is making progress in Iraq, although slightly more -- 49 percent -- do not.

White House press secretary Tony Snow reacted to the poll, saying that he hoped that "people do not try to engage in personal attacks on Gen. Petraeus or Ambassador Crocker."

"David Patraeus is basically the guy who's written the manual on counterinsurgency, and the one thing that you see with returning Democratic and Republican congressman is that something very significant has taken place," Snow said.

How the report is phrased also might determine how it is received, Holland said. If the report details military progress, that might be better received than what political progress the Iraqi government is making.

Twenty-six percent of those polled feel that the Iraqi government is making progress, while 69 percent said that it wasn't.

"We haven't done a lot of polling about the Iraqi government," Holland said, "but the numbers we have seem to indicate that people are pretty skeptical of any government official in Iraq."

The poll indicates that most of America's mind is made up about the war -- 72 percent said the report will have no effect on their view of the war.

Of those opposed to the war, 47 percent said Petreaus' report could not change their mind while 17 percent said it could.

Thirty-three percent said they support the war.

The poll was based on interviews of 1,029 Americans by telephone between August 6 and 8. The sampling error was plus or minus 4.5 percentage points, except for the questions based on the respondents' support or lack of support of the war, which was plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

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