LAST POLISH TROOPS COME HOME FROM IRAQ

AFP
28 oct 08

WARSAW (AFP) — The last group of Polish soldiers stationed in Iraq
returned home Tuesday formally ending Poland’s mission in the country
that began after the United States toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam
Hussein in 2003.

"The last soliders have come home," Polish army spokesman
Lieutenant-Colonel Dariusz Kacperczyk told AFP Tuesday.

An aircraft carrying approximately 100 soldiers touched down Tuesday
morning at a military base in Szczecin, north-west Poland.

Poland’s Minister of Defence Bogdan Klich will officially greet the
men in ceremonies scheduled at the base for Wednesday.

Poland formally closed its mission on October 4 with ceremonies at
the Diwaniyah military base where Polish troops were stationed some
180 kilometres south of Baghdad.

A total of 2,600 Polish soldiers were deployed in Iraq in 2003. The
contingent was gradually reduced to 900.

In its more than five years of military involvement in Iraq, Poland
lost 21 soldiers and saw 70 others wounded, according to US military
records.

Around 15,000 individual Polish soldiers had served in Iraq since
the 2003 war.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who came to power in October 2007,
pledged a quick withdrawal from Iraq during his election campaign.

With the withdrawal by Warsaw, the US-led coalition that invaded Iraq
in 2003 has further shrunk.

In May 2003, two months after the US invasion, the occupying force
was made up of 150,000 Americans and 23,000 other troops from 40
countries. Now, US numbers are around 144,000 while the coalition
has shrunk to less than 10,000.

Besides the US, the coalition now is made up of: Albania, Armenia,
Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Britain, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, El Salvador,
Estonia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia,
Romania, Tonga, and Ukraine.