Summaries here and here and here and here and here.

Grim statistics.

The number of US soldiers wounded in Iraq hit its highest level in two years last month, as 776 members of the military were wounded in action, US media reported Sunday.

The number of wounded in September was the highest since the battle for control of Fallujah in November 2004, the Washington Post reported in a story based on Department of Defence data.

Last month’s casualties were also the fourth highest since the US- led invasion of in March 2003.

An additional 300 troops were wounded in the first week of October…. Article

Related:

̾While much media reporting has focused on the number of dead, military experts say the number of wounded is a more accurate gauge of the fierceness of fighting because advances in armor and medical care allow many service members to survive who would have perished in past wars. The ratio of wounded to killed among U.S. forces in Iraq is about 8 to 1, compared with 3 to 1 in Vietnam. Article

Sorrowful, but smacks of more of a one-time incident than a tactical shift.

Hundreds of Iraqi policemen fell sick from poisoning Sunday at a base in southern Iraq after the evening meal breaking their daily Ramadan fast, and officials said they were investigating whether the poisoning was intentional.

An official with the Environment Ministry said 11 policemen had died. However, the governor of Wasit province where the poisoning took place denied any deaths, though he said some of the victims were in critical condition. There was no immediate explanation for the contradictory reports.

Some of the policemen began bleeding from the ears and nose after the meal, said Jassim al-Atwan, an inspector for the Environment Ministry, who was serving as a liaison in the investigation between the Health Ministry and the base, located in the town of Numaniyah.

[snip]

Some of the soldiers collapsed as soon as they stood up from them meal, others fell “one after the other” as they headed out to the yard in the base to line up in formation, al-Atwan said. Article

Hmm.

The U.S. military has reported the continued flow of Saudi fighters into Iraq.

Officials said the military has detected the flow of Saudi nationals into Iraq to fight the coalition and Shi’ites. They said the Saudis were recruited by Al Qaida to become suicide bombers and other attackers.

Maj. Gen. William Caldwell, spokesman for the U.S. military in Iraq, told a Sept. 29 briefing that 50 to 70 foreign fighters enter Iraq every month. Caldwell did not break down the influx of Al Qaida operatives. Article

Chaos abides.

…the creeping violence in the north — a region U.S. officials had hoped was getting more stable — underlines the difficulty in keeping all of Iraq’s potential hotspots under control at once.

It also suggests growing strains in another of Iraq’s sectarian divides. Baghdad has been suffering from violence between Sunni and Shiite death squads. In the north, the tensions are between Arabs and Kurds, who claim Kirkuk as part of their autonomous zone of Kurdistan to the north.

The violence also has begun to take on the grisly nature of Baghdad’s sectarian killings: In recent months, authorities in Kirkuk and Mosul have found bodies dumped in the city, their hands bound with signs they were tortured before their deaths. Article

Just thought it should be noted.

One hundred and thirty-four soldiers are expected to leave for Iraq next month.

Army spokesman Major Neumi Leweni said the contingent would be part of the rotation group to Baghdad. Article