NEW YORK, Sept 11: Photos of more than 1,000 US soldiers who died in Afghanistan and Iraq were laid out in Union Square Park in New York on Friday in a display intended to put faces of the fallen before the public.

Coming just days after the 1,000th US soldier died in the war in Iraq, the display was organized by Army veteran Nicholas Cohen, who said merely listing deaths in the newspapers each day did not capture the human cost of the war.

"There's no political organization behind this," said Cohen. "This is about the soldiers."

Dozens of passerby stared quietly as volunteers laid out photos in Union Square, which three years earlier had been the site of makeshift memorials for victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Cohen's mother, Arlene Harrison, said the display was not meant as an anti-war statement.

"We're anti using military force in a knee-jerk way," she said. "We have to have a good, honest, compelling reason before we sacrifice our children."-Reuters