BAGHDAD: The insurgency in Iraq appears to be more widespread and deadly than Iraqi leaders are prepared to admit, according to military figures and a report by a private security firm.

There have been 2,300 attacks in the past 30 days, according to a firm called Special Operations Consulting-Security Management Group. It said the attacks were being carried out from Mosul in the north through the Sunni heartland west of Baghdad and central Shia towns around Babylon down to Basra, in the south near the border with Kuwait.

The attacks ranged from car bombs and time bombs to rocket-propelled grenades, hand grenades, gunfire, mortars and landmines. It said there was an average of 80 attacks a day.

With the pressure on to rein in the insurgency before January's election, the defence minister, Hazim al-Shalaan, said on Wednesday all rebel cities would be subjugated next month, presaging some form of offensive.

For now it is the interim government and the occupying powers which are under attack. In Baghdad alone, there have been 1,000 attacks this month. One US officer said earlier this week that 3,000 mortars had been fired in the capital since the uprisings in April. Most are aimed at the Green Zone, the heavily fortified compound housing the Iraqi government and the US and British embassies.

Although Ayad Allawi, the prime minister, painted an optimistic picture to the US Congress last week, saying his government was on top of the insurgency and preparing for January's elections, others painted a darker picture of the security situation.

Dr Allawi said 15 of Iraq's 18 provinces were safe enough to hold elections and spoke only of "pockets of terrorists". The number of daily attacks has risen and fallen over the past year. It peaked in April at about 120 a day when Sunni and Shia gunmen led uprisings across the country.

Earlier this month there were about 90 attacks a day but last week that had dropped to 50, a senior US military official said. Insurgents have refined their attacks, focusing on suicide car bombs. September has been a record month with about 35 bombs in 30 days.

For the first time several of those car bombs have attacked moving targets, often US military or Iraqi police convoys, rather than the usual fixed targets like the entrances to US bases, the Green Zone, or police stations and recruiting bases.

In the latest attack, on Tuesday night, six American soldiers were injured when a car bomb exploded near a passing US military convoy in Mosul. But the picture is mixed. A British army major, Charlie Mayo, said there had been a fall in violence in the south-eastern provinces around Basra since August.

Although two British soldiers were killed in an ambush on Tuesday there had been some days with no incidents at all in the south-east. "There has been a very marked drop since August," he said. "The situation here is very different from the rest of Iraq."

US military officials are struggling to put a number on the force of insurgents they are fighting. Some have suggested up to 20,000, others more. "In terms of a core there are a few hundred," said a senior American military official, who declined to be named. But he said there could be many more involved who are loosely affiliated to insurgent groups. He said insurgents were finding recruits among the mass of young, unemployed and frustrated Iraqi men.

"Because a lot of Iraqis are unemployed and disaffected a lot of folk look at them as potential supporters," he said. "That is why in this environment the military option cannot be the only option. There has to be a campaign that is military, economic and diplomatic brought to the table."

The US military believes Falluja, 32 miles west of Baghdad is the stronghold for foreign fighters like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian militant. Yet his fighters have emerged in other cities, including an area of Baghdad known as Haifa Street, which is just a few minutes from the Green Zone.

Last week Dr Allawi boasted of a new peace in Samarra, another town in the troubled Sunni heartland. Yet on Tuesday dozens of gunmen from Zarqawi's group were seen parading through the street, forcing motorists to exchange music tapes for cassettes of Quranic readings. Some reports have suggested his militant group has grown to number at least 1,500. -Dawn/The Guardian News Service.