Baghdad Central Morgue Report For July

For the fourth consecutive month, the Baghdad Central Morgue set a new one-month record in July when it processed nearly 2,000 bodies, about 90 percent of them victims of Iraq's civil war.

The previous record of 1,595 bodies was set in June. Some 1,365 bodies were processed in May and 1,091 in April.

The new record reflects the continuing uptick in violence since the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Al Qaeda's leader of Iraq, in a U.S. airstrike, in early June. Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias continue to control much of Baghdad despite a highly publicized security crackdown in the city by U.S. and Iraqi forces during June, which ended in failure. A new crackdown involved twice as many U.S. troops is just getting underway.

Sunnis accounted for a disproportionate number of of the bodies received by the morgue compared to their share of the population.