BAGHDAD — The size of the U.S. force in Iraq has reached nearly 162,000 troops, the largest American presence at any point during the 52 months of the war, Pentagon officials said Tuesday.
The increase is the result of the regular replacement of troops and does not represent an additional buildup, said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman.
"There is no change to the level of effort and the combat power that we are projecting into Iraq," Whitman said.
Officials reported Tuesday that five more U.S. troops had been killed in Iraq, bringing the total this month to 21, and putting the military on pace to see more than 100 deaths in August. Three of the soldiers were killed Saturday by a roadside bomb south of Baghdad. The two others died Sunday in Baghdad in mortar or rocket attacks. The British military also announced that a British soldier was shot and killed Monday in the southern city of Basra.
Pentagon officials repeatedly have predicted that militants will try to step up the pace of their attacks before Gen. David H. Petraeus' September progress report to Congress.
In July, 80 Americans were killed, compared with more than 100 in each of the three previous months.
The U.S. military has reported 3,680 deaths since the war began in March 2003, according to icasualties.org, a website that tracks military deaths.
Since the arrival in June of the last of the additional U.S. forces ordered to Iraq as part of the buildup, the number of troops in Iraq has held at about 157,000. Whitman said the total probably would return to that level in a few weeks, and then rise again as brigades rotate in and out of Iraq.
The military typically has units overlap their tours in Iraq so the outgoing unit can help the new force acclimate. Army officials said the biggest reason for the current increase was that the 2nd Stryker Cavalry Regiment arrived to replace the 2nd Infantry Division's 3rd Stryker Brigade.
The previous high for U.S. forces was in January 2005, when the force level rose to 161,000 to coincide with Iraqi elections.
Although those elections were conducted successfully, the political system they eventually created has led largely to deadlock in Baghdad.
That paralysis continued this week with the boycott of the Cabinet by a secular political bloc led by Iyad Allawi, a former interim prime minister. On Tuesday, ministers with Allawi's bloc called on Prime Minister Nouri Maliki to remove what they labeled sectarian bias from his government.
