TOLL IN IRAQ AT 120 A DAY, U.N. REPORTS

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.

Gianni Magazzeni, chief of the U.N.’s human rights office in Baghdad, presented the world body’s report in the capital’s high-security Green Zone. He told reporters that although Maliki’s government had “taken a number of important steps in protecting human rights,” more should be done to uphold the rule of law.

Magazzeni highlighted an inquiry on abuses at a secret Interior Ministry detention facility discovered last year in a Baghdad bunker. So far, the Iraqi government has not made public any of its findings.

Recently, the report reveals, U.S. and Iraqi inspectors found 284 prisoners, ages 7 to 22, “in deplorable hygiene and medical conditions with signs of physical and sexual abuse allegedly committed by the prison guards and/or by their fellow inmates” in another prison on the western outskirts of the capital. The young inmates were crammed 70 to each cell and were without enough food or water. Some had not been charged with any crime. At least 41 bore signs of mistreatment, including torture and sexual abuse.

“The more there is impudence and no one is punished for their crimes, the more that fuels the cycle of violence and counter-violence,” Magazzeni said. Bringing people to justice will be key to restoring order in the country, he added.

The report underscores the extent of the country’s problems.

“Many of the death squads and rival militias have direct links with or are supported by influential political parties belonging to the government and are not hiding their affiliation,” the report says. “Militias and other armed groups are said to be in control of whole areas in the east and west of Baghdad and continue to carry out illegal policing, manning of checkpoints and ‘dispensation of justice’ through illegal trials and extrajudicial executions.”

Arbitrary arrests, allegations of torture and sexual abuse, deplorable prison conditions and a lack of judicial guarantees characterize Iraq’s detention system:

In northern Iraq, Kurdish militias allegedly hold detainees in secret prisons without trial for long periods.

The police and army are reportedly infiltrated by Shiite militias and death squads, and absenteeism is widespread.

In the northern city of Kirkuk alone, the report says, “half of the 5,000 police force and 13,000 army soldiers are not reporting to duty at any given time.”

The report also notes that operations by U.S. troops in Al Anbar province “continued to cause severe suffering to the local population.”

In the capital, entire neighborhoods have been “cleansed” according to sectarian affiliation. The report cites one mixed neighborhood where Shiite Muslim militias warned Sunni Arab Muslim families to leave within 24 hours. Gunmen then reportedly burned two houses with the residents inside.

Assassinations and persecution of women, minorities, journalists, intellectuals, educators, doctors, lawyers, politicians and security forces continued “in an alarming number” during the last two months.

“Incidents of honor killings, kidnappings associated with rape and sex slavery, and killing of women and children for sectarian reasons were reported in Kurdistan, Kirkuk and Mosul,” the report says. Secular and Christian women are harassed for not wearing head scarves and long skirts.

Attacks against Christians in general are also on the rise, especially after controversial comments about Islam made by Pope Benedict XVI in September.

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roug@latimes.com

Times staff writer Raheem Salman in Baghdad contributed to this report.