BAGHDAD, Iraq - The United Nations said Wednesday that 3,709 Iraqi civilians were killed in October, the highest monthly toll since the March 2003 US invasion and another sign of the severity of Iraq's sectarian bloodbath.

A man cries over the coffin of his brother, who was killed by gunmen, outside a hospital morgue in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) northeast of Baghdad, November 21, 2006. [Reuters]

Also on Wednesday, Gunmen shot dead a bodyguard of the parliament speaker and wounded another, a day after a small bomb exploded in one of the speaker's cars, his press office said.

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The attack occurred in Baghdad as the two men were heading to work, according to a statement by Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the speaker. The bodyguards were attacked by a group of gunmen in several cars, the statement said.

It did not say where the attack occurred but it came a day after an apparent attempt to kill al-Mashhadani in a car bomb attack inside the heavily fortified Green Zone, not far from the Convention Center where parliament meets.

The small bomb exploded Tuesday afternoon at the back of an armored car in the motorcade of the Sunni speaker as it was driving into a parking lot near the Green Zone's convention center, where al-Mashhadani and other Iraqi legislators were meeting, a parliamentary aide said.

The U.N. tally was more than three times higher than the total The Associated Press had tabulated for the month, and far more than the 2,866 US service members who have died during all of the war.

The report on civilian casualties, handed out at a U.N. news conference in Baghdad, said the influence of militias was growing and torture continued to be rampant, despite the Iraqi government's vow to address 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 U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq report said. "Many witnesses reported that perpetrators wear militia attire and even police or army uniforms."

The report painted a grim picture across the board, from attacks on journalists, judges and lawyers and the worsening situation of women to displacement, violence against religious minorities and the targeting of schools.

Based on figures from the Iraqi Health Ministry, the country's hospitals and the Medico-Legal Institute in Baghdad, the report said October's figure was higher than July's previously unprecedented civilian death toll of 3,590.

"I think the type of violence is different in the past few months," Gianni Magazzeni, the UNAMI chief in Baghdad, told the news conference. "There was a great increase in sectarian violence in activities by terrorists and insurgents, but also by militias and criminal gangs."

He said "this phenomenon" has been typical since Sunni-Arab insurgents bombed a major Shiite shrine on Feb. 22 in Samarra, north of Baghdad.

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

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