2,660 Iraqi Civilians Killed in Sept.

Bad news keeps rolling in from Baghdad, in an update on the death toll from last month:

More than 2,660 Iraqi civilians were killed in the capital in September amid a wave of sectarian killings and insurgent attacks, an increase of 400 over the month before, according to figures from the Iraqi Health Ministry.

The increase came despite an intensified U.S.-Iraqi sweep of Baghdad that was launched in mid-August to try to put down the wave of violence that has swept over the capital. The violence consists of a deadly combination of bombings and shootings by Sunni insurgents, and slayings by Shiite and Sunni death squads.

You can get daily updates on the death toll from Iraq, here. Antiwar.com is making an effort to tie together press reports. US military casualties are up, too.

Let me also recommend taking a gander at a bracing excerpt from Patrick Cockburn's new book, which attempts to humanize and localize the violence.