More U.S. military casualties arrive in Spain
From Al Goodman
CNN Madrid Bureau
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MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- Fifty-four U.S. military casualties arrived Thursday at a U.S. military field hospital in Rota, Spain, boosting to 327 the number of U.S. troops treated at the facility since the Iraq war began, a hospital spokesman said.
The arrivals included eight patients with combat wounds, 45 with noncombat ailments and one whose condition was not immediately available. The troops were from the Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force.
Rota, a Spanish naval base that the U.S. 6th Fleet uses under a bilateral agreement with Spain, has been receiving four flights of wounded U.S. troops a week, twice as many as in the early days of the war, said Navy Lt. Corey Barker, a spokesman at Rota.
The 250-bed military field hospital currently has 76 patients. The hospital is under a series of tents. A nearby 116-bed field hospital is empty and on standby for patients.
Of the U.S. troops treated at Rota since the war's outbreak, 124 have had combat wounds. Almost all the troops fought in the Iraqi conflict, but a handful were deployed in Afghanistan, Barker said.
Landstuhl Regional Medical Center at Ramstein Air Base in Germany remains the primary U.S. military hospital in Europe.
According to the latest figures provided by U.S. and British authorities, 157 coalition service members have died in the war in Iraq.
One hundred twenty-six Americans have died and 495 have been wounded, according to the Pentagon. Thirty-one Britons have been killed, and an unknown number have been wounded, according to the British Ministry of Defense.
U.S. military officials have reported thousands of Iraqi military deaths. There are no reliable figures available on civilians.
