BAGHDAD — The toll of Iraqi civilians has mounted steadily in the country's unrelenting violence and now takes an average of 120 lives each day, the United Nations reported Wednesday in its bleakest assessment of noncombatant casualties since the U.S.-led invasion.
October's toll of at least 3,709 civilian deaths was the highest so far, up nearly 400 from September and 700 from August.
The continued slaughter of civilians along with increasing poverty have forced more than 2 million people from their homes, contributing to a growing refugee problem within Iraq and in neighboring countries.
Children and older Iraqis living in tent camps are particularly at risk as the winter approaches, the report notes.
Some three-quarters of those forced from their homes have fled the country, the U.N. found, with nearly 100,000 Iraqis seeking refuge in neighboring Jordan and Syria each month.
The U.N. report details a land of horrors where Iraqi security forces kill those they are meant to protect, gunmen prey upon the weakest, and the judicial system is a shambles.
The United Nations based the civilian death toll on figures from the Baghdad morgue and the Health Ministry. On Wednesday, at least 65 Iraqis were reported killed in shootings and bombings, authorities said. So far this month, 51 U.S. troops have been killed in Iraq, down from 106 in October.
The grim portrait comes as U.S. officials and Iraqis approach major decisions on the future of the country. At the White House and the Pentagon, officials have been debating whether a short-term increase in troops might succeed in tamping down Iraq's increasingly bloody civil war. Administration critics have been pushing for a plan to begin cutting the number of American troops.
As all parties search for a way forward, Iraqi President Jalal Talabani is headed for meetings in Tehran this weekend that could bring together Iraqi, Iranian and Syrian representatives. Vice President Dick Cheney plans to visit Saudi Arabia on Saturday, and next week President Bush plans to meet Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki. Rather than risking a meeting here, the two will get together in the relative security of neighboring Jordan.
Sectarian killings and insurgent attacks are blamed for the mounting toll, with a majority of deaths taking place in Baghdad, according to the U.N.'s bimonthly report on the violence here. This summer, thousands of U.S. troops fanned out across the capital in a much-touted effort to bring a degree of calm, but the plan failed to slow the escalating civil war.
