With the death of an unnamed servicemember in a roadside bomb attack today, the number of U.S. dead in Afghanistan has crossed the 1,000 mark.
The Associated Press announced the figure it culled from its own count. Using different counting methods, Icasualties.org crossed the grim statistic last week and set the number at 1,007 deaths as of this afternoon. Both figures tally the number of servicemembers who died in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Uzbekistan, including personnel injured there but who later died overseas at facilities such as Walter Reed and Landstuhl Medical Centers. The difference between the tallies only underscores the difficulty in tracking casualties.
According to the Department of Defense, Operation Enduring Freedom has suffered a total of 1,076 fatalities, 791 of them in combat. The larger figure also includes deaths in Guantánamo Bay, Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Jordan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Philippines, Seychelles, Sudan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Yemen. The tally from the entire theater crossed the 1,000 milestone back in February.
A little over a week from today, on June 7, the operation will mark its 104th month, making it the longest war in U.S. history.