IRAQ/Analysis: Iraq is following the pattern of many wars which went before - it is the civilians who suffer the most, writes Michael Jansen.
Yesterday's carnage on Haifa Street in central Baghdad illustrates how dangerous life in Iraq has become for civilians.
The deaths of 47 people at the hands of insurgents exceeded the slaughter 48 hours earlier on "Bloody Sunday" when 13 were killed and 61 wounded after US helicopters fired rockets into a crowd of civilians. This followed a clash between insurgents and US troops.
The death toll on Sunday for the whole of Iraq was 110.
Iraqis were hit by US missiles in Ramadi, Falluja and Samarra in the "Sunni Triangle", caught by a car bomb in Abu Ghraib, mown down in crossfire in the Shia city of Hilla south of the capital, struck by US bombs and shells in the Turkoman town of Tal Afar in the north and murdered by Kurdish irregulars in Assyrian Christian villages near Mosul.
Yesterday 12 policemen were killed by the same insurgent group who set off the car bomb in Haifa Street after they opened fire on their minibus in the town of Baquba, bringing the total death toll yesterday to 59.
Commentators see the insurgency is expanding and gaining expertise.
At a time when the US is mourning 1,000 troops killed in Iraq, Iraqis are accounting for their dead. Estimates range between 11,000-30,000.
Analysts consider low the conservative figure of 11,793, the minimum put forward by UK-based Iraq Body Count. The Iraqi health ministry, which began keeping figures in April, counted 3,186 civilian fatalities since then, excluding those who are not brought to hospitals or morgues, which could double the figure.
A single medical facility in the capital, the Shaikh Omar Clinic, has recorded 10,363 violent deaths in Baghdad and nearby towns since the war began in March 2003. These figures suggest the estimate of 30,000 given by the Human Rights Organisation in Iraq is likely to be correct.
On the basis of this figure, the monthly average for Iraqi civilian deaths is 1,765, nearly double the 1,000-plus US military fatalities over the entire 17-month period.
According to official US estimates, the daily average of US troops killed and wounded during 2003 was 8.4. The figure for 2004 is 18. This is one-third of the 59 Iraqis who die daily.
The Human Rights Organisation in Iraq holds the Bush administration responsible for the fatalities and injuries amongst Iraqis.
The spiralling death toll has been accompanied by a heightened risk of kidnapping.
The September 7th seizure of two female Italian aid workers revealed that all foreigners are now targets. Until their kidnapping, only one of the more than 100 foreign abductees had been a woman - a Japanese, snatched along with two male colleagues. On September 9th, a woman correspondent working for a Turkish daily was abducted and held for 48 hours.
This change in tactics by Islamist and nationalist militants places foreigners on a par with Iraqi men, women and children, hundreds of whom have been kidnapped by gangs and held for ransom since the war's end.
One Iraqi business woman told The Irish Times yesterday: "There is a big difference between the time of Saddam Hussein and now. Then, we had security...But we could not go against the regime. Only people who stood against the regime were killed. Only people regarded as a threat were imprisoned.
"Today we have no security... Iraqis are not safe at home or outside the home. Iraqis can be rounded up and imprisoned at random, and held for many months without charges. Every Iraqi faces trigger-happy soldiers, bombers, kidnappers, rapists, thieves and killers all the time."