BAGHDAD, Iraq - Eleven more U.S. troops were slain in combat, the military said Wednesday, putting October on track to be the deadliest month for U.S. forces since the siege of Fallujah nearly two years ago.

The military says the sharp increase in U.S. casualties - 70 so far this month - is tied to Ramadan and a security crackdown that has left American forces more vulnerable to attack in Baghdad and its suburbs. Muslim tenets hold that fighting a foreign occupation force during Islam's holy month puts a believer especially close to God.

Iraqis walk past a car bomb wreck in Baghdad, Iraq, Wednesday Oct. 18, 2006. [AP]

As the death toll climbed for both U.S. forces and Iraqi civilians, who are being killed at a rate of 43 a day, the country's Shiite-dominated government remained under intense U.S. pressure to shut down Shiite militias.

Some members of the armed groups have fractured into uncontrolled, roaming death squads out for revenge against Sunni Arabs, the Muslim minority in

Iraq who were politically and socially dominant until the fall of

Saddam Hussein.

There have been growing signs in recent days of mounting strain between Washington and the wobbly government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, who felt compelled during a conversation with

President Bush this week to seek his assurances that the Americans were not going to dump him.

Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari on Wednesday blamed American officials who ran Iraq before its own government took nominal control for bringing the country to the present state of chaos.

"Had our friends listened to us, we would not be where we are today," Zebari said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Asked which friends he was referring to, Zebari said:

"The Americans, the Coalition (Provision Authority), the British. OK? Because they didn't listen to us. The did exactly what they wanted to do. ... Had they listened to us, we would have been someplace else (by now), really."

It was an unusually harsh statement from Zebari, a Kurd, whose ethnic group owes much to the U.S. intervention in Iraq and for its virtual autonomy in the north of the country.

A report in Britain's Financial Times on Wednesday said the White House is now pressuring Iraqi authorities to give amnesty to Sunni insurgents. That would be a surprising change for the Bush administration, which has resisted amnesty because it could potentially include fighters who have killed American troops.

At the State Department, spokesman Tom Casey said a decision on amnesty would be left to the Iraqi government.

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