The number of US military deaths in the Iraq war has reached 2,500, the Pentagon said Thursday, more than three years into a conflict that finds US and allied foreign forces locked in a struggle with a resilient insurgency.

In addition, the Pentagon said 18,490 US troops have been wounded in the war, which began in March 2003 with a US-led invasion to topple President Saddam Hussein.

Tens of thousands of Iraqis have been killed.

On an average day in the war, about two US troops are killed. In the average month, about 64 US troops are killed.

Defence analysts noted that US deaths in Iraq, while significant, are far fewer than in other protracted US wars since World War II. In the Viet Nam War, 58,000 US troops died. In the Korean War, 54,000 died.

Roadside bombs, known by the military as improvised explosive devices, are the biggest cause of US casualties. Ham said despite good progress in detecting roadside bombs and the insurgents responsible for making and planting them, the overall numbers of these attacks have increased over the past several months. Car bombs also remain a deadly threat.

The deadliest month of the war was November 2004, when 137 US troops died in a month when US forces conducted a fierce offensive in the city of Falluja in the western Anbar province to deny Sunni Muslim insurgents a safe haven.

US fatalities had dropped in five straight months from last November through this March, as insurgents appeared to focus more of their violence on Iraqi civilians and American-trained Iraqi government security forces.

But the US death tolls in April and May were above average, and the Pentagon has acknowledged a recent surge in insurgent violence.

New Al-Qaida leader identified

The US military said the man claiming to be the new al-Qaida in Iraq leader is Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an Egyptian with ties to al-Qaida's No 2 leader.

Major General William Caldwell, a US military spokesman in Baghdad, said al-Masri apparently is the same person as a man identified by the nom de guerre Abu Hamza al-Muhajer who has claimed to have succeeded Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and vowed to avenge him in threatening Web statements in recent days.

The Afghanistan-trained Al-Masri, an explosives expert, was a key figure in the al-Qaida in Iraq network and was long responsible for facilitating the movement of foreign fighters from Syria into Baghdad, Caldwell said at a news conference.

He has been a terrorist since 1982, "beginning with his involvement in the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which was led by (Osama bin Laden's deputy Ayman) al-Zawahri," Caldwell said.

The spokesman added that raids in April and May in southern Baghdad recovered material that confirmed his high-level involvement in the facilitation of foreign fighters.

"Al-masri's intimate knowledge of al-Qaida in Iraq and his close relationship with (al-Zarqawi's) operations will undoubtedly help facilitate and enable them to regain some momentum if in fact he is the one that assumes the leadership role," Caldwell said.

He said, however, that al-Masri's ability to exert leadership over al-Qaida cells remained unclear and there were other "al-Qaida senior leadership members and Sunni terrorists" who might try to take over the operations.

Iraq's national security adviser said earlier Thursday that Iraqi security forces have seized al-Qaida in Iraq documents, giving key information about the militant group's network and the whereabouts of its leaders. "We believe this is the beginning of the end of al-Qaida in Iraq," Mowaffaq al-Rubaie told a televized news conference.

(China Daily June 16, 2006)