A U.S. service member was killed in Iraq when an improvised explosive device struck his vehicle, the Department of Defense announced on Oct. 1, the 13th American combat death in Operation Inherent Resolve, the three-year-old campaign against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and the 8th fatality in 2017 alone.
After six years of civil war, Syria remains the bloodiest battlefield on the planet. But there’s one other conflict zone whose violence in recent years has come to eclipse both the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — and the bloodshed is right on America’s doorstep.
