BAGHDAD, Iraq, July 4 — Baghdad's central morgue said today that it received 1,595 bodies in June, 16 percent more than in May. The tally showed that the pace of killing here has increased since the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted insurgent leader in Iraq.
Baghdad, home to about a quarter of the country's population, has slowly descended into a low-grade civil war in some neighborhoods, with Sunni and Shiite militias carrying out systematic sectarian killings that clear whole city blocks. To a large extent, control of the capital means control of the country, and Baghdad is at the center of efforts by American military officials and the new Iraqi government to stem the tide of violence.
After the killing of Mr. Zarqawi on June 7 in an American air strike, thousands of troops set up new checkpoints throughout the city in an effort to improve security, but it has had little effect. A significant fraction of the 31,000 American troops here was drawn into a search for two kidnapped American soldiers south of Baghdad soon after the new security plan was announced.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the American ambassador to Iraq, told the British Broadcasting Corporation today that the killing of Mr. Zarqawi has not made the country safer.
"In terms of the level of violence, it has not had any impact at this point," he said. "As you know, the level of violence is still quite high."
The central morgue, which receives bodies from Baghdad and its outskirts, offers a rough measure of the pace of the violence. The toll for June, provided by a morgue official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to talk to the media, was roughly twice the tally for June 2005, which was 879 bodies.
American officials say that Iraqi civilians bear the brunt of the killing here, with about 70 percent of all deaths.
At least 10 Iraqis were killed in violence across Iraq today, authorities reported. In the most lethal attack, 7 Iraqis were killed and 33 were wounded when a car bomb blew up on a street lined with butcher shops in the northern city of Mosul, the police said.
The bomb went off while Saed Mahfoud, a butcher, was sitting in his shop. "I woke up in the hospital, and the only thing I remember is the sound of the police siren," he said.
In Baghdad, a series of mortar shells hit Mansour, an upscale neighborhood, wounding nine people, including four police officers.
The morgue stank of bodies today. Visitors burned pieces of paper and wood in the parking lot to mask the smell. The reception area was crowded with about 40 Iraqis, mostly women, standing and sitting on the ground, waiting to look at bodies and photographs of bodies.
Around 11 a.m., three pickup trucks drove up with at least eight bodies in the back. Morgue workers and police officers put them in body bags and brought them inside.
Officials in Baghdad receive 10 or 20 bodies a day, mostly victims of Sunni and Shiite militias, according to American officials. A government official said in an interview last week that Sunni Arabs make up about 30 percent of the bodies found, a disproportionately high number compared to their share in the population.
Tallies differ, depending on the ministry offering them. The Associated Press reported on Monday that tallies from the defense, interior and health ministries put the total deaths in June at 1,006.
The sight of bodies is no longer a surprise. An Iraqi woman said she had reached the front of a gasoline line in Sha'ab, a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in northern Baghdad, when a police pickup truck drove in front of her to fill up its tank. She said she smelled a foul odor and noticed a pile of bodies in the back of the truck.
In another high profile kidnapping, gunmen dressed in army and police uniforms seized Raad al-Harith, the Deputy Minister of Electricity, and 19 of his bodyguards in the heavily Shiite neighborhood of Talbiya in northern Baghdad this morning, according to an Interior Ministry official.
It was not clear how the guards were overcome, but Reuters reported that they did not resist, apparently believing the seizure was an official operation. The attackers arrived in seven cars, the agency reported.
In the evening, Reuters reported that Mr. Harith and seven of his bodyguards had been freed in the same area. It was not clear what had happened to the other 12.
The seizure comes three days after Sunni legislator Taiseer Najah al-Mashhadani and seven of her bodyguards were kidnapped in a northern district bordering Sadr City. Iraqi authorities had no new information on Ms. Mashhadani's whereabouts.