3 KIA, 4 DUSTWUN
The Department of Defense announced today the death of three soldiers and the identities of four soldiers listed as Duty Status Whereabouts Unknown (DUSTWUN), in the May 12 incident at Al Taqa, Iraq, in which their patrol was attacked by enemy forces using automatic fire and explosives. They are assigned to the 4th Battalion, 31st Infantry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, Fort Drum, N.Y.
Killed were:
Sgt. 1st Class James D. Connell Jr., 40, of Lake City, Tenn.
Pfc. Daniel W. Courneya, 19, of Nashville, Mich.
Pfc. Christopher E. Murphy, 21, of Lynchburg, Va.
Reported as DUSTWUN are:
Sgt. Anthony J. Schober, 23, of Reno, Nev.
Spc. Alex R. Jimenez, 25, of Lawrence, Mass.
Pfc. Joseph J. Anzack Jr., 20, of Torrance, Calif.
Pvt. Byron W. Fouty, 19, of Waterford, Mich.
Search and recovery efforts are ongoing, and the incident is under investigation.
One of the missing is in fact not missing but as yet unidentified due to the condition of the body.
AP:
“I’m proud of my dad, because he didn’t really fight for himself, he fought for the country,” Connell’s teenage daughter, Courtney, told Knoxville’s WATE-TV.
Courneya’s mother, Wendy Thompson, said her husband, Army Spc. David Thompson, was in Iraq and returning home after learning of his stepson’s death.
…
“The captors don’t have freedom of movement,” said Maj. Kenny Mintz of San Diego. “If they have the soldiers, they can’t move them from where they are. We’re doing a deliberate search of the areas.”
… The soldiers attacked last Saturday were assigned to a small patrol base set up as part of the new U.S. strategy to move troops from large, heavily defended garrisons to live and work among the people.
Critics of the strategy had warned that such small outposts are more vulnerable to attack. Last month, nine American soldiers were killed when a suicide bomber detonated his explosives-laden vehicle near a small patrol base northeast of Baghdad.
Last week, an embedded reporter for the Stars and Stripes newspaper, who visited the patrol base south of Baghdad, said the soldiers were housed in a rural home with protective razor wire “not far from the front door.”
“Soon after the base was established, insurgents began testing their new neighbors,” the Stars and Stripes said. “In the first months, one convoy came across seven roadside bombs piled outside the front gates. More recently, U.S. officials had gotten reports that a force of more than two dozen insurgents planned to storm the walls” although the attack never materialized.
Simmins suggests that particular attack was not exactly on a small unit and suspects the latest anti-surge line is developing.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 8:46 pm on Tuesday, May 15, 2007
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