International relief agency Oxfam said Wednesday that it had pulled its foreign staff out of Iraq because the security level in the country had deteriorated to the point where the group could no longer operate. “The risk level was becoming unacceptable for us, making it impossible for our programs to operate,” Simon Springett, Oxfam’s program manager for Iraq told The Associated Press from Amman, Jordan. The death toll of American soldiers in Iraq rose to 279 on Wednesday as the military announced that a soldier had died of a non-hostile gunshot wound. More soldiers have died since President Bush declared an end to major combat in Iraq on May 1 than before his declaration. On Wednesday, a military court hearing began for four U.S. soldiers accused of abusing prisoners of war at a camp in southern Iraq. The hearing on whether to press charges against the men took place at Camp Bucca near the port city of Umm Qasr with. The four Army reservists from the 320th Military Police Battalion are accused of punching and kicking several Iraqis, breaking one man’s nose, while escorting a busload of prisoners to a POW processing center near Umm Qasr in May. The soldiers claim they acted in self defense. Full Story
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