WASHINGTON, March 15 (UPI) -- Attacks have continued to rise in Iraq, and civilians are increasingly bearing the brunt of the violence, according to a new Pentagon report.
While coalition forces are the focus of most of the attacks by insurgents and militias, Iraqi civilians and security forces suffer most of the casualties, according to the new quarterly report to Congress, "Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq."
In December 6,000 civilians were killed and wounded, more than twice the number of casualties suffered by coalition forces, which are protected by body armor, armored vehicles, and have the weapons and training to defend themselves.
The average number of daily civilian casualties -- wounded and killed -- neared 100 in the last two months, a period the Pentagon report has labeled "transition to self-reliance." That is a major jump from May 2006 when the Iraqi government was just getting established. Then the average daily civilian casualties hovered just below 60.
Violence continues to be clustered in Baghdad, Anbar, Sala Ah Din and Diyala provinces in the center of the country. They represent 37 percent of the population but 80 percent of the daily attacks.
Sectarian-inspired murders increased steadily through 2006, topping out in December at nearly 1,300 that month. They dropped to just below 1,200 in January, according to the report.
The report echoes the National Intellegence Estimate issued in January, which labeled what is happening in Iraq as "more complex" than a civil war, buut "some elements of the situation in Iraq are properly descriptive of a 'civil war.'"
That is a change from the last quarterly report issued in December which said "conditions that could lead to civil war do exist."
The previous report singled out the Shiite militia loyal to Muqtada al Sadr, Jaysh al-Mahdi, as having the "greatest negative affect on the security situation" which "has replaced al-Qaida in Iraq as the most dangerous accelerate of potentially self-sustaining sectarian violence in Iraq."
The new report no longer focuses on JAM, but offers al-Qaida in Iraq and JAM as part of the broader mosaic of security problem in Iraq, to include Sunni insurgents, tribal rivalries and criminals.
