Baghdad, Iraq ? After a week of near-daily disasters, L. Paul Bremer, the chief administrator of the U.S.-led occupation, flew Thursday to a pair of southern Iraq cities to highlight the unglamorous but steady reconstruction progress that he said plodded on despite headline-making gun battles, bombs and riots.

“There are real signs of hope that I see as I travel around this country,” Bremer said as he prepared to board a Chinook helicopter and return to Baghdad after stops in two cities near the Iranian border. “But what doesn’t get reported on is the literally thousands of reconstruction projects that are going on in this country. Certainly not everybody’s condition is as good as we want it to be, but I think we really are making progress.”

Thursday marked the end of one of the most tragic seven-day periods since U.S.-led forces removed Saddam Hussein’s regime in April. In addition, violent criminals continue to make the streets unsafe in many areas and most Iraqis have neither jobs, reliable electric power nor clean water.

Asked to put the litany of bad news in context, Bremer didn’t address specifics. He said: “I don’t deny we’ve had some problems, and I don’t deny we’ve got a lot more work to do.”

At a briefing Tuesday, Bremer had said: “Look, it’s a regrettable thing anytime there is the loss of innocent life. There are, in combat operations, always going to be mistakes.” He said he thought the number of innocent civilians killed by coalition forces was low, although he also said he didn’t know what that number was.

He had acknowledged that Iraq was facing a new terrorist threat from foreign fighters who have entered the country since the war, and said he expected attacks to continue from the “bitter-enders,” his term for members of Saddam’s former Baath Party regime who are trying to maim and kill American troops.