The grim milestone was reached in a roadside bombing just before the Memorial Day weekend, when America honors the dead in all its wars.
The NATO statement did not identify the victim or give the nationality of the service member killed yesterday in southern Afghanistan. US spokesman Colonel Wayne Shanks said the trooper was American — the 32d US war death this month by an Associated Press count.
Already the new focus on the once-forgotten Afghan war has come at a heavy price. More than 430 of the US dead were killed after Obama took office in January 2009. The number of US troops in Afghanistan has now surpassed the total in Iraq — about 94,000 in Afghanistan compared with 92,000 in Iraq, where the war is winding down.
The list of American service members killed in combat in Afghanistan begins with Sergeant First Class Nathan Ross Chapman of San Antonio, a 31-year-old career special forces soldier ambushed on Jan. 4, 2002, after attending a meeting with Afghan leaders in Khost Province. He left a wife and two children. The base where a suicide bomber killed seven CIA employees last December bears his name.
For many of the US service members in Afghanistan, the 1,000 mark passed without fanfare.
Captain Nick Ziemba of Wilbraham, Mass., serving with the First Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment in southern Afghanistan, said 1,000 was an arbitrary number and would have no impact on troop morale or operations.
“We’re going to continue to work,’’ he said.
The tally is based on Defense Department reports of deaths suffered as a direct result of the Afghan conflict, including personnel assigned to units in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Uzbekistan. Other news organizations count deaths suffered by service members assigned elsewhere as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, which includes operations in the Philippines, and the Horn of Africa, and at the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
At least 675 troops from allied countries have died in the war, according to an AP tally based on announcements of foreign governments. They include 288 British service members.
