Baghdad, Iraq ? Punctured by bullets or torn by bombs, broken bodies keep coming into Baghdad’s main morgue. Some are dumped on the blood-splattered concrete floor. Others lie naked on metal gurneys in a hallway, waiting for autopsies as flies buzz in the spring heat.

Even before the spasm of bloodshed that began early last month, Iraqis were suffering a heavy toll from crime, tribal revenge killings, terrorist bombings and fighting between coalition troops and insurgents.

An Associated Press survey of deaths in the first 12 months of the occupation found that more than 5,000 Iraqis died violently in just Baghdad and three provinces. The toll from both criminal and political violence ran dramatically higher than violent deaths before the war, according to statistics from morgues.

There are no reliable figures for places like Fallujah and Najaf that have seen surges in fighting since early April.

Indeed, there is no precise count for Iraq as a whole on how many people have been killed, nor is there a breakdown of deaths caused by the different sorts of attacks. The U.S. military, the occupation authority and Iraqi government agencies say they don’t have the ability to track civilian deaths.

But the AP survey of morgues in Baghdad and the provinces of Karbala, Kirkuk and Tikrit found 5,558 violent deaths recorded from May 1, 2003, when President Bush declared an end to major combat operations, to April 30. Officials at morgues for three more of Iraq’s 18 provinces either didn’t have numbers or declined to release them.

The AP’s survey was not a comprehensive compilation of the nationwide death toll, but was a sampling intended to assess the levels of violence. Figures for violent deaths in the months before the war showed a far lower rate.

That doesn’t mean Iraq is a more dangerous place than during Saddam Hussein’s regime. At least 300,000 people were murdered by security forces and buried in mass graves during the dictator’s 23-year rule, U.S. officials say, and human rights workers put the number closer to 500,000.

“We cannot compare the situation now with how it was before,” Nouri Jaber al-Nouri, inspector general of the Interior Ministry, said recently. “Iraqis used to fear everything. … But now, despite all that is happening, we feel safe.”