With Allawi in power and January elections approach- ing, U.S. commanders have said they are stepping up the training and arming of Iraq's security forces.

The U.S. military has been training Iraqi police and the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps members for more than 18 months. But over the summer, the Army officer formerly in charge of training, Maj. Gen. Paul D. Easton, acknowledged that misguided U.S. methods had wasted almost a year.

The forces' weakness were highlighted in April, when police largely abandoned their stations in the face of an uprising by Shiite militiamen in Baghdad and southern cities. When the militia rose up again last month, U.S. forces did most of the fighting.

Iraqi police on duty numbered 31,300 in July, the last month for which figures are available. That is down from 90,803 in May. Some were sent for retraining, some were killed and others were removed for supporting the insurgency.

Attacks on Iraqi security forces and police officers have killed hundreds of people in the 17 months since insurgents began their campaign to expel U.S.-led forces.

From April 2003 to May 2004, 710 Iraqi police were killed out of a total force of 130,000 officers, authorities said. Since May, at least an additional 180 people have been killed in attacks targeting police facilities. Insurgents have also kept up a steady drumbeat of smaller scale attacks on police checkpoints and police officials.

Interior Ministry spokesman Sabah Kadhim acknowledged that authorities were finding it increasingly difficult to find safe places to train recruits.

"Certainly there's an escalation in the operations to damage the country," he said. He insisted attacks would not scare off Iraqis seeking to join the police but conceded that a lot of work still needed to be done.

"We started from scratch and we need time," Kadhim said.

But analysts were less certain.

"These attacks threaten Iraqi confidence in these (government) institutions," said Bathseba Crocker of the New York-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Crocker also said the stepped up attacks in Baghdad were likely part of deliberate strategy.

"No security in Baghdad means there is no security in the country ... it (the attacks) signifies that it is growing in sophistication and organization," she said.

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Contributing: Sameer N. Yacoub, Sinan Saladin.