Baghdad, Iraq ? With casualties mounting in Iraq, jumpy U.S. soldiers are becoming more aggressive in their treatment of journalists covering the conflict.

Media people have been detained, news equipment has been confiscated, and some journalists have suffered verbal and physical abuse while trying to report on events.

Although the number of incidents involving soldiers and journalists is difficult to gauge, anecdotal evidence suggests it has risen sharply the past two months.

The president of the Associated Press Managing Editors, an association of editors at AP’s more than 1,700 newspapers in the United States and Canada, sent a protest letter to the Pentagon on Wednesday urging officials to “immediately take the steps to end such confrontations.

“The effect has been to deprive the American public of crucial images from Iraq in newspapers, broadcast stations and online news operations,” wrote Stuart Wilk, managing editor of The Dallas Morning News.

In October, the Belgium-based International Federation of Journalists, which includes unions representing 500,000 journalists in more than 100 countries, complained of increased harassment of reporters, including beatings of some, since the fall of Saddam Hussein’s regime.

“Guidance has been passed to units throughout the coalition explicitly stating that reporters are not to be interfered with or cameras and films seized,” said Maj. William Thurmond at the Coalition Press and Information Center.

“Does that take place all the time? No.” Thurmond said. “We are aware that individual soldiers have not followed those instructions.”

In Washington, representatives of 30 media organizations wrote to the Pentagon expressing their dismay about the harassment of journalists in Iraq. In a letter to Larry Di Rita, acting assistant secretary of defense, the Washington bureau chiefs pointed out that the Pentagon’s own guidance to troops says “media products will not be confiscated or otherwise impounded.”

A number of journalists, particularly Iraqis and other Arabs working for foreign media organizations, say they are now routinely threatened at gunpoint if they try to film the aftermath of guerrilla attacks. Some have been arrested and detained for short periods.