April 05, 2004

By Bryant Jordan
Times staff writer

Four more Marines were killed in enemy action in Iraq over the weekend. Lance Cpl. Aric J. Barr, 22, of Allegheny, Pa., and Pfc. Geoffrey S. Morris, 19, of Gurnee, Ill., died Sunday in Anbar Province, west of Baghdad.
Barr, who was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, from the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, Calif. Morris was with 2nd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, at Camp Pendleton, Calif.

On Thursday, Pfc. Dustin M. Sekula, 18, of Edinburg, Texas, died from wounds he sustained from enemy fire in Anbar Province. Two days prior, Lance Cpl. William J. Wiscowiche, 20, of Victorville, Calif., was killed by hostile fire in the same area.

Sekula was with 2/7. Wiscowiche was assigned to 1st Combat Engineer Battalion from Pendleton, Calif.

As of today, 12 Marines have been killed in action since March 8. There also have been two non-combat Marine deaths in that time, one in Iraq and another in Kuwait. Both those deaths are under investigation.

A force of 25,000 Marines with I MEF is deployed to Iraq for the first of two planned seven-month rotations, taking over for elements of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division in the area west of Baghdad. The first rotation is expected to conclude in September, with the second slated to end in March 2005.