Pentagon raises official toll of troops who died during war with Iran to 21

By Tara Copp,Noah Robertson,Alex Horton and Warren P. Strobel

Washington Post

The Pentagon acknowledged late Friday that the number of troops who have died in the Middle East during its operations against Iran is higher than previously reported, and updated the official count to include two more noncombat deaths.

The Washington Post exclusively reported last month, based on information from six U.S. officials, that the numbers of service members lost was greater than what the Pentagon was reporting in its official, public database, known as the Defense Casualty Analysis System, or DCAS.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the time called that reporting “a complete lie” in a social media post. However, late Friday, the Pentagon raised the figure publicly reported in DCAS to include additional deaths.

As of Friday, the total troop deaths the administration is connecting to operations against Iran and officially reporting in DCAS stands at 21.

That figure includes two additional noncombat deaths: Maj. Sorffly Davius, 46, an Army National Guard member who died in Kuwait on March 6, and an unidentified Navy suicide that occurred in September, according to a U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide additional context on the troop deaths.

In addition, 865 service members have been wounded, according to updated data in DCAS.

The military also acknowledged one additional soldier’s training accident death that it said was not tied to ongoing operations against Iran.

Sgt. Devin A. Seibel, 26, died during a training accident in Iraq in May. His death is now recorded in DCAS under Operation Inherent Resolve, the military’s decade-long named operation against the Islamic State. That service member’s death brings the total number of troops who have died in the Middle East since Feb. 28, the date that operations against Iran began, to 22.

On Friday, two of the top Democratic members of the House Armed Services Committee said they were glad the Pentagon had made a “public correction” to the overall losses in the war.

“There is no excuse for a mistake of this magnitude,” the committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Adam Smith (Washington) and Rep. Chrissy Houlahan (Pennsylvania), the top Democrat on the military personnel subcommittee, said in a statement, calling the fact that Congress had to get involved to have the Pentagon correct its numbers “an embarrassment” for the military.

In a statement to The Post, the Pentagon did not acknowledge the changed numbers but instead said it is making further revisions to how DCAS reports casualties, including a new category of “pending adjudication” as it works through casualty reporting. The new adjudication category was first reported by Defense Scoop.

The Pentagon “continues to maintain a steadfast commitment to the transparent, accurate accounting of all Service member casualties,” it said in a statement.

It has been difficult for the public and lawmakers overseeing the Pentagon to get a clear picture of how many troops have been injured or killed during the conflict in part because the Trump administration changed mid-conflict the way it was publicly accounting for troop deaths, something critics have charged is a way for President Donald Trump to hide the true cost to military personnel.

In previous conflicts those injuries or deaths – whether caused by hostile action or nonhostile causes, such as accidents or suicides – have been captured by named conflict in DCAS.

In part, what has confounded DCAS data in this conflict is that earlier this year Trump declared that Operation Epic Fury had ended, even though the U.S. and Iran were still exchanging fire. In response the Pentagon created a new category of injured and killed that was not tied to Epic Fury, instead those numbers would be tallied under overseas contingency operations.