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CASUALTIES

The US has lost 4,487 service personnel in Iraq since the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom on 19 March 2003, according to the latest figures from the US Department of Defense.

By 31 August 2010, when the last US combat troops left, 4,421 had been killed, of which 3,492 were killed in action. Almost 32,000 had been wounded in action.

Since then, in what was called Operation New Dawn, 66 have died, of which 38 were killed in action. Three hundred and five have been wounded in action since 1 September 2010.

Coffins of U.S. military personnel are prepared to be offloaded at Dover Air Force Base in Dover.

CASUALTIES• Deaths of Iraqi civilians and combatants are more difficult to track because of a lack of reliable official

figures. All counts and estimates of Iraqi deaths are highly disputed. The organisation Iraq Body Count has been collating civilian deaths using cross-checked media reports

and other figures such as morgue records.

According to IBC there have been between 97,461 and 106,348 civilian deaths up to July 2010. The most bloody period for civilian deaths was the month of invasion, March 2003, in which IBC says

3,977 ordinary Iraqis lost their lives. A further 3,437 were killed in April of that year.

President George W. Bush addresses U.S. Army soldiers and their families at Fort Hood, Texas,

January 3, 2003

Iraqi soldiers sit in front of sand bags in Baghdad March 20, 2003.

An explosion rocks Baghdad during air strikes March 21, 2003.

A US Army combat engineer tries to get a radio connection at a checkpoint between the cities of Najaf and Karbala as another sandstorm turns the

daylight orange for the second day on March 26, 2003

An Iraqi girl holds her sister as she waits for her mother (R) to bring over food bought in Basra March 29, 2003

U.S. Marine Corp Assaultman Kirk Dalrymple watches as a statue of Iraq's President Saddam Hussein falls in central Baghdad April 9, 2003. U.S. troops pulled down a 20-foot (six metre) high statue of President Saddam Hussein in central Baghdad and Iraqis

danced on it in contempt for the man who ruled them with an iron grip for 24 years.

A U.S. soldier redirects people outside of the United Nation headquarters in Baghdad August 19, 2003.

A detained Iraqi man with a plastic bag covering his head sits in garden of a house searched by U.S. soldiers during a night raid in Tikrit October 30, 2003

A row of U.S. Army helmets are perched on M-16 rifles during a memorial at Al Asad air base November 6, 2003 for the 15 victims of a Chinook helicopter which was shot down by insurgents on the weekend.

An Iraqi man sits against a mural based on the scandal of prisoners abuse in the prison of Abu Ghraib in the Shi'ites suburb of Sadr city in Baghdad May 27, 2004.

A British Royal Marine Commando attached to the Black Watch stops Iraqi civilians at a check-point in the desert near camp Dogwood, 40.2 kilometers (25 miles) south of Baghdad, Iraq November 21, 2004

U.S. Marine platoon Gunnery Sergeant, Ryan P. Shane (C), from the 1st Battalion of the 8th Marine Regiment

and another member of 1/8 pull a fatally wounded comrade to safety while under fire during a military operation in the Iraqi western city of Falluja, in this handout photograph released on December 17, 2004.

Cindy Sheehan, of Vacaville, Calif., President of Gold Star Families for Peace and mother who lost her

son, U.S. Army Specialist Casey Austin Sheehan, who was serving in Iraq, stands near the ranch owned by then President George W. Bush in Crawford, Texas August 7, 2005.

British soldier jumps from a burning tank which was set ablaze after a shooting incident in the southern Iraqi city of Basra September 19, 2005.

An Iraqi man suspected of having explosives in his car is held after being arrested by the U.S army near Baquba, Iraq, October 15, 2005.

Father Gene Buhr of St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Hawthorne, Calif. and Ana Alvarez walk through the Arlington West Memorial Project on the beach in Santa Monica, California, May 28, 2006

Alicia Casilio, dressed as an Iraqi civilian, stands silently at an anti-Iraq war protest in Boston, Massachusetts January 11, 2007. The numbers on Casilio's face represent the estimated number of Iraqi civilians killed in the War.

U.S. soldiers pray during a memorial service for late PFC Allen Brenton Jaynes from Texas, in the U.S. forces army camp in Baghdad, January 26, 2007. Jaynes was killed by a roadside bomb while four of his colleagues

were wounded

U.S. soldiers push the car of an Iraqi man to start the engine at a checkpoint in north Baghdad June 13, 2007.

An Iraqi girl holds her hands up while U.S. and Iraqi soldiers search her family house in Baquba early June 30, 2007.

An aerial view of the village of Kahtaniya, one of two villages struck by garbage trucks packed with explosives, west of Mosul, northwest of Baghdad August 16, 2007.

A U.S. flag with greetings from home is decorated in an emergency room of the 28th Combat Support hospital in the Green Zone in Baghdad August 18, 2007

An Iraqi man unbuttons his shirt as U.S. soldiers point their laser sights on him during an operation near Baiji oil

refinery December 24, 2007

A resident gestures as he talks to a U.S. soldier from 2nd Brigade combat team, 82nd Airborne on patrol in Baghdad's Adhamiya district January 5, 2008

U.S. soldiers stand near the Swords of Qadisiyah monument in Baghdad March 13, 2008.

Mehdi Army fighters raise their weapons as they chant slogans outside the al-Iraqiya television network in Basra, 550 km (340 miles) south of Baghdad, March 30, 2008.

A man wails while waiting to claim the body of his brother, killed in an air strike, outside a hospital morgue in Baghdad's Sadr City April 30, 2008.

An Iraqi baby lies in a cradle while a woman argues with U.S. soldiers of 1/8 Bravo Company searching for weapons, explosives and information about militants in the area during a foot patrol in a neighborhood of

Mosul June 26, 2008.

A U.S. soldier waves to residents at the newly-opened Mithaq swimming pool in Baghdad's Sadr City August 30, 2008

Smoke rises near the Iraqi Ministry of Justice, shortly after a blast, in Baghdad October 25, 2009

Residents gather at the site of a bomb attack that occurred in Basra, 420 km (260 miles) southeast of Baghdad, May 10, 2010

U.S. Marine Capt. Jill A. Leyden of Easton, Maryland, touches the grave of her friend Major Megan M. McClung at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia on Veterans Day, November 11, 2010.

Keith Fidler kisses his wife Cynthia, as their son Kolin looks on, during a homecoming ceremony in New York, April 8, 2011

for the New York Army National Guard's 442nd Military Police Company's return from Iraq.

A member of the U.S. Air Force rests in a hall, before flying to the U.S., at al-Asad air base in Iraq's western province of Anbar November 1, 2011

U.S. Air Force Major Stacie Shafran carries her luggage to a loading paddock while waiting for her departure from Iraq at the former U.S. Sather Air Base near Baghdad, Iraq December 14, 2011.

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