BAGHDAD, Oct 30: Pentagon estimates showed that more than 60 Iraqis are killed or wounded every day in insurgents’ attacks. In a first partial public count of Iraqi casualties in the war, available on Sunday, the Pentagon estimated nearly 26,000 Iraqis were killed or wounded in attacks by insurgents since January 2004, with the daily number increasing fairly steadily.

The Pentagon report to Congress said casualties among Iraqi civilians and security forces rose from about 26 a day between Jan. 1 and March 31, 2004, to about 64 a day between Aug. 29 and Sept. 16, 2005, just before the constitutional referendum.

The numbers exclude Iraqis killed or wounded by US forces, for which the Pentagon says it does not release data. The Pentagon has not previously provided such a comprehensive estimate of the Iraqi casualty toll from insurgent attacks.

“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.

A suicide truck bombing at dusk in a small Shia town killed 30 people and wounded 42 on Saturday.

In Saturday’s attack, the bomber parked a truck laden with dates in the centre of Howaider, a Shia town, and gathered a crowd of customers around the vehicle to buy the produce before he detonated a massive charge, police said.

Among the dead were merchants breaking the daily Ramazan fast at sunset in their shops around the marketplace and people out enjoying the festive atmosphere of dusk in the holy month.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the targeting of Shia civilians bore the marks of Sunni extremists linked to Al Qaeda and recalled an attack six weeks ago in Baghdad when a bomber gathered a crowd of Shia day labourers seeking work and killed more than 100.

Howaider, 8 kilometres north of the provincial capital of Baquba some 70 km north of Baghdad, sits on the bank of the Diyala river and is renowned locally for the produce of the date palm groves that surround it.

Diyala province has a broad sectarian mix of Sunni and Shias and has seen considerable violence launched by insurgents opposed to the Shia-led government in Baghdad.

US commanders in the province describe it as a “little Iraq” because of its mixed population, and campaigning there for a Dec. 15 election is likely to be among the hardest fought in the country, with local tensions mirroring broader divisions.

Ethnic tensions in the northern city of Mosul crackled on Sunday after Sunni Arab police and armed Arab tribesmen took to the streets late on Saturday in protest at what they say is a Kurdish-dominated regional government.

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in a German magazine interview published on Sunday that US forces were making inroads on the insurgency, though he warned attacks might rise in the run-up to December’s elections.

The blast in Howaider came a day after a deadline for parties to register for the elections that Washington is hoping will set Iraq firmly on the path to peace and democracy, two and a half years after the US-led invasion.

It also comes at the end of a week which saw the United States mark the 2,000th US military death in Iraq.

Recent weeks have been marked by a relative lull in violence, despite an Oct. 15 referendum and the start of Saddam Hussein’s trial for crimes against humanity.

With the election looming, the coming week’s Eid holiday marking the end of Ramazan will be a wary time as crowds gather to celebrate, making an easy target.—Reuters