BAGHDAD - The battle for Baghdad cost the lives of at least 1,101 Iraqi civilians, many of them women and children, according to records at the city's 19 largest hospitals.

The civilian death toll was almost certainly higher. The hospital records say that an additional 1,255 dead were "probably" civilians, including many women and children. Uncounted others never made it to hospitals and now lie in shallow graves throughout the city - in cemeteries, yards, hospital gardens, parks and mosque grounds.

More than 6,800 civilians were wounded, the hospital records show.

A Pentagon spokesman called even one civilian death too many, but military historians said that, compared with past wars, the toll was relatively low.

The numbers, gleaned from archives that separated military from civilians, include those killed between March 19, when the U.S. air war began, and April 9, when the city fell. The largest number appear to have occurred April 5 and 6, when U.S. troops began fighting their way into the city.

At the Shaheed Al Adnan Hospital in central Baghdad, for example, the ledger showed 44 civilian deaths in the first 17 days of the war, then 41 for the last five days, including 24 on April 5 and 12 on April 6.

Iraqi doctors acknowledge that the records may not be perfect. Although it was fairly easy to categorize women and children as civilians, men were a challenge, especially in the final days when some Saddam Hussein loyalists reportedly fought in civilian clothes and soldiers shed their uniforms in retreat.

The doctors said they separated soldier from civilian by relying on age and other factors. In general, if a man was dressed in civilian clothes and carried no military identification, they assumed he was a civilian. They said that many soldiers did present military ID.

The records make no effort to determine whether the dead were killed by American or Iraqi fire, although the doctors believe that U.S. weapons produced most of the casualties.

"Was our record-keeping perfect?" asked Basim J. Al-Shaeli, a general surgeon at Al Kharama in the southwest sector. "I was performing 10 major operations a day, staying here around the clock. While I was doing this, the shooting would be going on, bullets would be crashing into the hospital around us, and we could hear the tanks outside the gates.

"I was performing surgery on an injured neck, an injured head or face, and I was insisting that they be taken home the next day, because the demand for beds was so great, and even so we were always overcrowded. And this wasn't just me; every doctor here worked like this. So no, our records are not perfect. But I believe they are accurate."

The Baghdad death toll also does not include the hundreds of civilians who died in other parts of Iraq. Tabulations have not been made in many of Iraq's cities, but available information indicates that hundreds of civilians died during the U.S. assault. In Najaf, for example, the Najaf Teaching Hospital reported that it had recorded 286 civilian dead and 57 military dead.

The Bush administration says it will make no effort to tally Iraqi dead, either civilian or military. The Iraqi Red Crescent Society says it will have no report on civilian deaths until mid-May. So the hospital records provide what appears to be the first credible, if imperfect, starting point for determining how many civilians perished in the battle for the capital. The Red Crescent said these 19 hospitals were the likeliest to have received dead and injured.

Most of the deaths in the city occurred in Baghdad's southwest sector, where the Third Infantry Division stormed the international airport April 4 and made a well-publicized foray through Baghdad neighborhoods April 5.

The records show 1,101 deaths that doctors felt were clearly those of civilians, 845 of them recorded at three hospitals - Al Kharama, Al Askan and Yarmuk - near the airport.

An additional 1,255 dead probably were civilians, doctors say, all reported at the same three hospitals. At Al Kharama, 30 percent of 450 such bodies were women and children, doctors said. Others were men without identification in civilian clothes who the doctors believed to be civilians. But a final determination was not made, in part because of the volume of bodies to be dealt with.

By contrast, 137 U.S. service personnel and 33 British have been killed in Iraq. The last official estimate of Iraqi civilian deaths - based on Iraqi government claims before Baghdad fell - totaled about 1,250.

Ameer K. Daher, a general surgeon who was trapped near his home by the fighting, noted that many people never made it to hospitals. He recalled that when cluster bombs smashed nearby houses, he and his neighbors set up a field hospital in a secondary school.

"We buried 10 people in the mosque and treated 45 more with what supplies we had in our homes," he said. "We were not the only people forced to do this."

Though Lt. Col. James Cassella, a Pentagon spokesman, said "even one civilian death is one civilian death too many," others noted that civilian deaths vary widely from war to war.

Civilian deaths in the Persian Gulf War in 1991 were estimated at 3,500 from bombing and other "direct war effects," said Beth Osborne Daponte, a senior research scientist at Carnegie Mellon University. Conflicts such as World War II caused millions of civilian deaths.

Mark Burgess, a research analyst with the Center for Defense Information, an independent think tank in Washington, said the Baghdad numbers appear low when placed in the context of previous civilian death tolls. He cited as examples the U.S. firebombing of Tokyo or Dresden, Germany, both during World War II. Those episodes killed tens of thousands.

"Considering the amount of ordnance dropped on Baghdad, it probably could have been a lot worse," he said. "Clearly, these are a lot of casualties, and any civilian casualty is regrettable and should be examined, but looking at the number of casualties historically gives us a clearer picture."

American officials have always said that they hoped to minimize civilian casualties, and in the days before U.S. troops moved north out of Kuwait, most troops were given extensive training on so-called rules of engagement intended to minimize civilian casualties.

But once troops entered Iraq, the lines between Iraqi combatants and civilians blurred as U.S. supply lines came under attack by fighters wearing civilian clothes. A suicide bombing at an army checkpoint near Najaf that killed four soldiers heightened tensions, as did reports that Hussein loyalists were driving white pickup trucks - a vehicle also common among civilians. News accounts reported incidents of U.S. soldiers firing on cars, only to learn that the cars held families trying to escape the fighting.

U.S. air bombing maps included several dozen Baghdad "NFAs," or no-fire areas, large red circles around civilian targets such as hospitals, power plants, hotels, schools, and some government ministries.

But Hussein placed his forces in schools, deployed tanks and antiaircraft artillery in residential neighborhoods, and hid rocket launchers under bridges, knowing the American reluctance to attack such places.

A drive through Baghdad today makes clear the city is no postwar London or Berlin, where bombing destroyed large stretches. The Baghdad bomb damage is spotty, occasional.

Still, in many neighborhoods, residents are quick to point out exactly where American bombs ended the lives of neighbors and friends.

On a recent day, 8-year-old Mustapha Amad lay in a ward of six beds in the Al-Karkh Hospital. On April 6, midafternoon, American jets flew low over his neighborhood. He was hiding in the house and got scared, so he ran out to his uncle.

His mother, Nakam Abd Al Razak, 27, explains that she moved in with her brother during the war because the neighborhood seemed safe. She said her brother lifted Mustapha into his arms and pointed out that the American planes had gone by and that everything was all right now.

"When the planes returned, the bombs killed my uncle," Mustapha said. His own legs were shattered, although doctors believe he may someday be able to walk, if unevenly.

"Three other children near him died, as did one other young man," his mother said, finishing the story. "Another 20 people were hurt."

Doctors at several hospitals alleged that civilians died because U.S. soldiers were not allowing civilian ambulances into neighborhoods near the battles.

In front of the Al Laqa Hospital, which recorded one civilian death, a bullet-pocked ambulance sits on four flat tires. One hospital doctor was shot in the leg when he went into it to try to reach the wounded.

"For all doctors, it was a very difficult time," said Al-Laqa's manager, Dr. K. Al-Naimi. "We could not... get the blood, the medicines, that we needed. At times, there were wounded in the streets, but we could not get to them."

Two pregnant women were killed when a U.S. tank shelled their ambulance on the way to Yarmuk Hospital on April 7, doctors there say. The driver and a doctor along to provide care were both injured. Soon afterward, they add, shells destroyed an entire floor of the hospital's diabetes center.

Perhaps the most graphic image of the death toll is the 150 graves in the garden around the Al Askan Hospital.

"Our halls were full of victims of tanks, of the bombings, of the shooting," Dr. Akeel Maltde said. "Many of their bodies are still here, outside. Anyone can see for themselves."

But there is so much death in this city right now that even that is sometimes asking too much.

An Iraqi family told the Red Crescent last week that they had buried a 10-year-old girl during the war. Red Crescent officials uncovered the body and photographed its disfigured face, then reburied the body and posted the photos, hoping the girl's family would stumble upon her image and claim her body.

They say that is the best they can do.

"Do you know how many people we are trying to help?" said Ali Ismail, who is in charge of the search for the girl's identity. "Every day we find more."