The trend has continued this month. Eleven of the first 17 U.S. military deaths have been Marines, including seven who perished Monday in a suicide car bombing near the city of Fallujah.

August was the only month, aside from March 2003 when the U.S. invasion was launched, in which Marine deaths in Iraq exceeded those of the Army. It is difficult to pinpoint the reasons for the unusually high death toll for the Marines because they limit details on the circumstances of battle deaths to either "enemy action" or "non-combat related." The Army specifies the type of weapon that caused the death as well as the city where it happened.

The vast majority of Marine deaths in August - 24 of the 33 total - were in the western province of Anbar, which includes the restive cities of Fallujah and Ramadi as well as dangerous areas on the Syrian border where Marines patrol to keep out foreign infiltrators and smugglers.

Fallujah was the scene of devastating clashes last spring until the Marines pulled out. Since then resistance fighters have deposed the city's U.S.-backed leaders and the United States has launched airstrikes at safehouses thought to be used by followers of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the militant believed responsible for bombings, kidnappings and other violence in Iraq.

The Marines are no longer in Fallujah but have been attacked many times outside the city.

Last month, Marines took the lead in ferocious fighting around Najaf, the holy city in south-central Iraq where radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army militia battled U.S. and American-backed Iraqi forces for three weeks before a peace deal was arranged.

But that did not account for the increase in Marine casualties. Seven of the 33 Marines who died in Iraq in August were in the Najaf fighting; the Army had five of its 30 losses there.

The total U.S. military death toll for the entire Iraq conflict is nearing 1,000, and the rate of increase has not slackened since Iraqi sovereignty was restored June 28.

Forty-two U.S. troops died in Iraq in June, 54 in July and at least 64 in August. And the number of troops wounded in Iraq is approaching 7,000.

Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, acknowledged to reporters at the Pentagon on Tuesday that there has been a recent increase in U.S. and Iraqi casualties. "The enemy is becoming more sophisticated in its efforts to destabilize the country," Myers said.

Six times as many U.S. troops have died in Iraq since President Bush declared major combat over on May 1, 2003 as died during the initial phase of the war. When Bush made his declaration, the insurgency had not yet taken hold and most Americans thought the war was essentially over.

Marines and soldiers are still getting killed by insurgents using rocket-propelled grenades, mortars and roadside bombs in Baghdad, Mosul, Samarra and other cities and villages. The bombs - improvised devices often armed with 155mm artillery shells - are placed along roadways and disguised, often detonating as U.S. or Iraqi government troops approach.

The lone Air Force death in Iraq in August was caused by a roadside bomb near Mosul in northern Iraq. It killed Airman 1st Class Carl L. Anderson, Jr., 21, of Georgetown, S.C., on Aug. 29. A day later, Army Staff Sgt. Aaron N. Holleyman, 26, of Glasgow, Mont., was killed when his vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb. He was a member of the elite 5th Special Forces Group.

As an example of the roadside bomb problem, the Army's 1st Infantry Division said Friday that soldiers near the city of Tikrit found one that was rolled up in tire rubber and another wrapped in a burlap bag. Both were made from 155mm shells; they were disarmed by explosives experts.

Away from the spotlight on the insurgency in Najaf and areas in and around Baghdad in August, a number of Marines were killed in far western Iraq, near the Syrian border.

They included Lance Cpl. Joseph L. Nice, 19, of Nicoma Park, Okla., and Gunnery Sgt. Elia P. Fontecchio, 30, of Milford, Mass., who were killed within a half-hour of each other Aug. 4 at Qaim, near the Syrian border. Fontecchio was felled by a roadside bomb and Nice by a sniper's bullet, according to the Washington Post, which recently reported from the Qaim area.

Nice and Fontecchio were among three from the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment of the 1st Marine Division who were killed in August. The unit, which is returning home after seven months in Iraq, lost two more Sept. 3. They have had 18 killed since they arrived in Iraq, compared with just one lost during the battalion's first deployment to Iraq in 2003.

Another Marine unit operating near the Syrian border, the 1st Light Armored Reconnaissance Battalion, lost two men in August. That unit has been overseeing construction of forts along the border to be used as headquarters by Iraqi border patrol units.

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