The Pentagon has estimated that nearly 26,000 Iraqis have been killed or wounded in attacks by insurgents since January 2004, with the daily number increasing fairly steadily.
A Pentagon report to Congress said casualties among Iraqi civilians and security forces rose from about 26 a day between January 1st and March 31st, 2004, to about 64 a day between August 29th and September 16th, 2005, just before the referendum on the Iraqi constitution.
The Pentagon has not previously provided such a comprehensive estimate of the Iraqi casualty toll from insurgent attacks.
It also refuses to release data on the number of Iraqi civilians killed or wounded by US forces. "Approximately 80 per cent of all attacks are directed against Coalition Forces, but 80 per cent of all casualties are suffered by Iraqis," the report said.
The report noted that attacks by insurgents increased as expected in the runup to the referendum.
Weekly attacks numbered just under 200 in the first quarter of 2004, and rose to over 650 a week as the referendum approached. The daily figures were presented in a bar graph covering six time periods since January 2004.
A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Barry Venable, told today's New York Timesthat the report was not a comprehensive accounting of Iraqi casualties.
He said the count did not provide separate figures for the number of killed or wounded and how many of those were civilians, police officers or soldiers.
The counts were based on casualty reports filed by US and allied forces who responded to attacks, but Colonel Venable noted that foreign troops did not respond to all attacks. The report showed the number of Iraqis killed and wounded rose to 50 a day by the end of 2004 and dropped slightly through August before rising again to about 64 a day after August 29th.
The US military death toll reached 2,000 last week, and more than 15,000 troops have been wounded since the March 2003 start of the war.