BAGHDAD — It's been more than a month since Hassan Hadi watched as his co-workers were executed one by one at the Happiness Bakery, and he can't stop replaying the moment when fate spared him.
In a small apartment just a block from the scene of the slaughter, a relative of one of the victims tucks a pistol into his waistband and slides a dull green grenade into his coat pocket as he ponders revenge.
And in the gloomy dissecting hall of Baghdad's central morgue, a doctor who examined the bakery victims laughs weakly to himself as still more bodies arrive at the crowded facility.
"The cases we are getting are unbelievable," Dr. Taha Qassim says. "Huge crimes, assassinations, beheadings. Why, only today I dissected three beheaded bodies. We will probably break the record for beheaded cadavers in any forensic department in the world."
As Iraq's newly elected leaders cobble together the foundation of a fledgling democracy, a killing epidemic has taken hold of this troubled nation. Ministry of Health statistics show that record numbers of Iraqi civilians are coming to violent ends, particularly here in the capital.
Assassinations and bombings have garnered worldwide attention. But Iraqi officials say violence unrelated to the insurgency is growing, and Iraqis are more likely to die at the hands -- or in the cross-fire -- of kidnappers, carjackers and angry neighbors than in car bombings.
In some cases, authorities say, the motives are so opaque that they cannot tell whether they are investigating a crime disguised as an act of war or a political assassination masquerading as a violent business dispute.
In Baghdad alone, officials at the central morgue counted 8,035 deaths by unnatural causes in 2004, up from 6,012 the previous year, when the U.S. invaded Iraq. In 2002, the final year of Saddam Hussein's regime, the morgue examined about 1,800 bodies.
Of the deaths occurring now, 60% are caused by gunshot wounds, officials say, and most are unrelated to the insurgency. Twenty to 30 bodies arrive at the morgue every day, and the victims are overwhelmingly male.
Much of the violence, officials say, is inspired by the ethnic, tribal and religious rivalries that were held in check by Hussein's brutal rule, and facilitated by a ready supply of firearms. That deadly combination has let loose a wave of vengeance killings, tribal vendettas, mercenary kidnappings and thievery.
