The number of US service members killed in Iraq since the war began in 2003 reached 3,000 on Sunday, a symbolic milestone at a time when the Bush administration is rethinking its strategy for the increasingly violent conflict.

As the year drew to a close, the US military announced that a soldier was killed on Saturday by a roadside bomb while on patrol in a southeastern neighbourhood in Baghdad. Two soldiers were injured in the attack. Their names were not released.

The Defense Department also announced that Spec. Dustin R Donica (22), of Spring, Texas, was killed by small-arms fire on Thursday in Baghdad.

According to the Associated Press and the independent website iCasualties.org, both of which keep counts of war fatalities, the deaths raised the American toll to at least 3,000.

The 140,000 US troops currently in Iraq have not been able to clamp down the daily violence caused by an aggressive insurgency in the western province of Anbar and an increasingly bitter sectarian conflict in Baghdad.

“This pace of casualties is likely to go on until we change or find a new approach,” said Anthony Cordesman, an analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The bipartisan Iraq Study Group recommended that the focus of US troops in Iraq be shifted from combat to training Iraqi soldiers and police officers, and that most combat brigades be withdrawn by early 2008.

The most recent deaths happened during a particularly costly month for the war. With 111 casualties, according to iCasualites.org, December was not only the deadliest month of 2006 for US troops, but the deadliest in two years.

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