Business is booming at the Baghdad morgue.

Before the war, before the fall of Saddam Hussein's government, seven or eight bodies arrived each day at this nondescript building in northeastern Baghdad for autopsies. Most deaths resulted from car crashes or other accidents. Killings were rare, and gun violence rarer still, a testament to the monopoly that Mr. Hussein held on the use of force.

Now the paper-and-cardboard ledgers where the autopsies are logged are torn from overuse. On an average day, the morgue receives 20 to 25 bodies, the human cost of the post-war wave of crime and insurgency engulfing the city.

"The unexpected change is an increase in bullet injuries," said Dr. Abdul Razzaq al-Obeidi, one of the morgue's chief doctors. "Mostly vengeance." In the first eight months of this year nearly 3,000 people in municipal Baghdad, which has about five million residents, have died from gunshot wounds - nearly all homicides, Dr. Obeidi said. A surge of killings in September has only increased the pressure.

By Alex Berenson The New York Times
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