BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq reported yesterday that about 12,000 civilians were killed last year — the third full year since the US-led invasion — with a dramatic rise in the last three months, when 5,000 died. Only about half as many Iraqi soldiers died in 2006 as American troops.But the number of Iraqi security forces killed jumps to 1,539, nearly double the American death count for the year, when the deaths of police, who conduct paramilitary operations, were added to the number of slain Iraqi soldiers.

In all, the Iraqi ministries of Health, Defence and Interior reported a total of 13,896 Iraqi civilians, police and soldiers died last year, a figure that is only 162 greater than the tabulation kept by The Associated Press.

The AP count, assembled from its daily news reports, was always believed to be substantially lower than the actual number of deaths because the news cooperative does not have daily access to official accounting by the Iraqi ministries. Many deaths were thought to have gone unreported by AP.

While the United States government and military provide no death totals for Iraqis, the United Nations Assistance Ministry for Iraq, UNAMI, does keep a count based on reports it gathers from the Baghdad morgue, Ministry of Health, and Medico-Legal Institute.

The figures for November and December are not yet available from the UN, but as of the end of October the organisation had reported 26,782 deaths in the first 10 months of 2006, nearly double what the Iraqi government and the AP reported for the entire year.

In its last report, the UN said 3,709 Iraqi civilians were killed in October alone and that citizens were fleeing the country at a pace of 100,000 each month. The organisation estimates at least 1.6 million Iraqis had left since the war began in March 2003.

Life for Iraqis, especially in Baghdad and cities and towns in the centre of the country, has become increasingly untenable. Many schools failed to open at all in September, and professionals — especially professors, physicians, politicians and journalists — are falling to sectarian killers at a stunning pace.

At the time of the last UN report, Iraqi government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh called it “inaccurate and exaggerated” because it was not based on official government reports.

The UN report said Iraq’s heavily armed and increasingly brutal Shiite militias were gaining strength and influence and that torture was rampant, despite the Iraqi government’s vow to reduce human rights abuses.

“Hundreds of bodies continued to appear in different areas of Baghdad — handcuffed, blindfolded and bearing signs of torture and execution-style killing,” the last UNAMI report said. “Many witnesses reported that perpetrators wear militia attire and even police or army uniforms.”

The two primary militias in Iraq are the military wings of the country’s strongest Shiite political groups on which Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is heavily dependent. He has repeatedly rejected US demands that he disband the heavily armed groups, especially the Mahdi Army of radical anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.

“I think the type of violence is different in the past few months,” Gianni Magazzeni, the UNAMI chief in Baghdad, said when the last report was issued in late November. “There was a great increase in sectarian violence in activities by terrorists and insurgents, but also by militias and criminal gangs.”

He noted that religious clashes have been common since Sunni Arab insurgents bombed a major Shiite shrine on February 22 in Samarra, north of Baghdad.

UNAMI’s Human Rights Office continued to receive reports that Iraqi police and security forces have either been infiltrated by or act in collusion with militias, the report said.

It said that while sectarian violence is the main cause of the civilian killings, Iraqis also continue to be the victims of terrorist acts, roadside bombs and drive-by shootings, while some have been caught in the cross fire between rival gangs.

In its September 2006 issue, the “Lancet,” an independent and authoritative journal, published a study on mortality rates in Iraq. The study estimated that 654,965 excess Iraqi deaths, including 601,027 from violence, had occurred in Iraq since the invasion of the country in March 2003.