October is on course to be the bloodiest month for the American military in Iraq in almost two years, with 10 servicemen reported to have been killed within a day.

The dead were the latest victims of a dramatic surge in the number of American casualties. Already 67 American servicemen have died this month, an average of almost four a day.

The latest American death took place yesterday, when a soldier died after his patrol was attacked with small-arms fire south of Baghdad, the Associated Press reported. There have been days with a higher number of American deaths, but not solely from combat, the AP added.

In deaths occurring on Tuesday, three soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division were killed and one wounded during combat in Diyala province, northeast of Baghdad, the military said.

Four more died when a roadside bomb struck their vehicle as it traveled west of the capital. A soldier was killed in Baghdad when his patrol came under machinegun fire and another when a roadside bomb struck his vehicle.

In Anbar province, a marine died from wounds sustained in earlier fighting.

At least 2,777 American troops have been killed since the invasion in 2003. American commanders have attributed this month’s marked increase in casualties to a peaking of the violence during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

However, the mounting toll follows a decision in the summer to increase the number of troops in Baghdad in an effort to try to stop the sectarian violence that has engulfed the city.

Units have conducted house-tohouse sweeps in eight of the capital’s most violent areas and stepped up the number of patrols across the city.

They have also been more actively hunting down Shiite death squads blamed for much of the sectarian killing.

The number of monthly deaths had fallen to 43 in July, before rising to 65 in August and 71 last month. But the Baghdad deployment marked a reversal of the policy implemented last year to reduce the presence of American forces on the ground and to hand over responsibility to Iraqi forces.

American soldiers have instead found themselves prominently in the midst of the country’s embryonic civil war. A senior American military spokesman, Major General William Caldwell, said this week that the new strategy was linked to the rise in the number of American deaths.

“We are more aggressively engaged in the city at this point than we were just a month ago,” he said.

The most deadly month of the war for American troops was November 2004 when 137 died and marines conducted their assault on the city of Fallujah.This month looks likely to be the bloodiest for America since 127 of its personnel died in January 2005 as the country held its first democratic elections.

The latest peak comes at a politically sensitive time for Washington ahead of the midterm elections next month and the publication of a report by the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, chaired by the Mr. Bush family adviser, James Baker, in December. The body was invited to explore new ways for America to extricate itself from the conflict.

Leaks in recent days have indicated that it is planning to suggest inviting help from Iran and Syria, both pariah states for American officials, in ending the conflict.

That solution has been endorsed by Iraq’s president, Jalal Talabani, who said he believed it would end the violence “within months” and be “the beginning of the end of terrorism.”