49 killed or found dead in Iraq

? A blood-drenched October has passed into a violent early November as a motorcycle rigged with explosives ripped through a crowded Shiite market in Sadr City on Thursday and suspected Sunni insurgent gunmen killed a Shiite dean of Baghdad University.

The attacks showed no signs of abating after at least 1,272 Iraqis were killed in the first full month of autumn and the 43rd month of the U.S. bid to quell violence and build democracy in Iraq, according to an Associated Press count. The figure is a minimum because many deaths go unreported, but the total is higher than any other month since the AP began keeping track in May 2005.

At least 49 people were killed or found dead Thursday throughout Iraq, including the seven killed when the motorcycle blew up in a crowded market in Baghdad’s Sadr City district. At least 45 people were wounded in that attack, many of them seriously, police said.

AP statistics also showed nearly twice as many Iraqi security forces died last month as U.S. forces – 194 versus 106. The Interior Ministry said at least 119 Iraqi policemen were killed.

With shootings, bombings and abductions tearing apart Iraq three years after the U.S.-led invasion, the war in Iraq is the top issue for voters before next week’s U.S. congressional elections.

An Iraqi woman pulls her hair during her son's funeral Thursday in Baghdad's Shiite enclave of Sadr City. Her son was killed when a roadside bomb detonated Thursday in Baghdad's al-Jadeeda district.

The Iraqi president, visiting Paris, said Thursday that all American forces could be gone from Iraq within three years.

“Two to three years are needed to build our security forces and say bye-bye to our friends,” Jalal Talabani said. The president, a Kurd whose ethnic group owes its relative prosperity and independence in northern Iraq to the U.S. invasion, has repeatedly predicted an earlier departure for American forces than U.S. generals have.

When asked about Talabani’s remarks, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Todd Vician said, “All parties agree on the desire to hand over control for security to the Iraqis as soon as possible.”