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Iraqi civilian deaths declined last month

US and Iraqi officials said on Sunday that they saw a decline in the monthly civilian casualty count last month, a development that occurred as the US troop increase reached full strength.

However, the size of the decline was hard to gauge because death counts in Iraq are highly inaccurate. Some bombing victims' bodies are never recovered, families often collect their dead before they can be counted by officials, and the dead bodies found around Baghdad, while generally taken to the city morgue, are sometimes taken to hospitals where they may not be counted.

A US military spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Garver, said there had been only "a slight decrease in the month of June."

He said that it was "a potential downward trend" and that the military would be closely watching the numbers in the coming weeks.

US forces do not make specific figures public.

Garver said that US and Iraqi troops were just two weeks into a major operation against Sunni insurgents in the regions around Baghdad.

"We can't tell yet the effect we're having," he said. "But reducing deaths in the civilian population is why we're doing what we're doing."

Iraqi officials have estimated that civilian deaths nationwide had dropped 36 percent last month, down to about 1,200. Civilian casualties in May had topped 1,900, they said.

The Web site icasualties.org, which tabulates news reports of civilian deaths, put the number of deaths last month at about 1,342, down from 1,980 in May.

In Baghdad, 765 civilians were reported killed last month. That was down from 1,070 in May, an Interior Ministry official said.

However, the number of dead bodies found in Baghdad, while lower last month than in May, still was higher than in April, according to the official. In April, there were 411 dead bodies found in Baghdad; in May, there were 726; last month, the number dropped to 540.

Fewer US troops died last month than in April, when there were 112 troop deaths, or May, when deaths reached 126.
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