The Pentagon yesterday released its bleakest assessment of Iraq yet, reporting record levels of violence and hardening sectarian divisions in the last quarter of 2006 as rival Sunni and Shiite militias waged campaigns of “sectarian cleansing” that forced as many as 9,000 civilians to flee the country each month.

Weekly attacks in Iraq rose to more than 1,000 during the period and average daily casualties increased to more than 140, with Iraqi civilians bearing the brunt of the violence — nearly 100 killed or wounded a day, according to statistics in the Pentagon’s latest congressionally required quarterly report on security in Iraq.

Those figures may represent as little as half of the true casualties because they include only violence observed by or reported to the U.S.-led military coalition, the report acknowledged. It cited a United Nations estimate, based on hospital reports, that more than 6,000 Iraqi civilians were killed or wounded in December alone.

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