Of the dead, about 4,000 were civilians, more than 1,200 were police officers, and 475 were soldiers. More than 1,700 people described as terrorists were also killed.
No comparable figures for previous years were available. The figures did not include more than 1,000 people killed in August when panic over rumors of a suicide bomber provoked a stampede on a Baghdad bridge.
A toll calculated by the independent Iraq Body Count Web site, which uses media reports, estimates that more than 27,700 civilians alone have been killed since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
(Reuters)