The number of U.S. service members killed as a result of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Afghanistan is rising, Foreign Policy reported Friday.
From the beginning of April to the end of June of this year, IEDs killed or injured 3,043 people in 1,143 separate incidents in Afghanistan, according to internal slides obtained from the Department of Defense by FP.
The numbers are also a 17 percent increase when compared to the same period in 2016, according to the report.
The Pentagon’s bomb-combatting agency, the Joint Improvised-Threat Defeat Organization (JIDO), produced the report. While it used open-source reporting for its analysis, the document was marked for Official Use Only, FP reported.
A spokeswoman for JIDO told Foreign Policy in an email that the agency typically will release unclassified documents a few months after they are reviewed. She did not immediately respond to the outlet’s request for comment about the statistics.
IEDs have long been a weapon used by terrorist organizations in their battles.
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