Sunday witnessed the single deadliest car bombing in Baghdad yet. At eight on that foggy morning, a car loaded with 1,000 pounds of explosives rammed into the main entrance to the coalition's sprawling compound, killing 25 people.

But the attack at the aptly nicknamed "Assassin's Gate" could only have been designed as a symbolic strike on the US, officials say. Aside from the contingent of soldiers guarding the gate, wearing body armor and stationed behind heavy fortifications, there aren't any US targets there. The buildings that house the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority are at least half a mile away.

Instead, the principal target of the attacks seems to have been Iraqi civilian workers, hundreds of whom line up at the gate every morning for security screenings before going inside to take up jobs cleaning and carrying out basic construction. Of the 25 or so people killed, at least 23 were Iraqis, and the latest outrage brought home that average civilians continue to bear the brunt of deaths inside the country.

"These terrorists say they're out to hit the Americans, but it's average Iraqis who get killed every time,'' says Maryam Ali Haider, whose husband, Fadel, was badly injured in the blast. "They don't want to let us live in peace."

There aren't any reliable statistics on the numbers of Iraqis killed in Iraq since the war. The US-led coalition says it doesn't try to keep track. But while US military deaths from all causes reached 500 over the weekend, most analysts in Iraq say the local civilian death toll is some multiple of that, numbering well into the thousands.

Iraqis typically respond with a complicated, conflicting set of emotions to such attacks. On the one hand there's anger at the perpetrators and an acknowledgement they are at the root of the problem. But there is also anger and frustration at the US for many, who can't understand why the most powerful military in the world can't make them feel safe.

"The US did us a great favor by getting rid of Saddam Hussein, but they're failing completely at keeping us safe, and that's causing us to lose our respect for them,'' says Abdul Jabar al-Kabi, a butcher attending a demonstration Monday that demanded the US hold elections here by June. "That attack was horrible - it shows that we could do a much better job if we were put in charge."

To be sure, the rise in frustration over the security situation has been matched by an increase in Iraqi civilians willing to step forward and report on suspicious activity in their communities or rumors of planned attacks. US commanders, from the Sunni Triangle in the center of the country to the far north, say a growing awareness of the damage the insurgents do to local communities has led to that change.

"A lot more people have been coming forward,'' says Col. Steven Russel, a commander in Tikrit. That's in part, he says, "because people recognize that when someone takes a shot at us with a [rocket-propelled grenade], they usually miss and it hits an Iraqi house."

One example of this was the killing of three foreigners in a Baghdad house on Monday. US soldiers responded to a tip from locals that there were armed men there, and when they arrived to check it out they were fired upon. Soldiers killed the three men in the house, two Yemenis and a Syrian, who were subsequently labeled foreign terrorists.

"We know these foreigners who hate Iraq are sneaking into our country,'' says Mustafa Qasim, a Baghdad resident. "They're the ones behind the terror attacks and all Iraqis will work to stop them."

There is a flip side to this, however, and it gets to the mixed feelings many Iraqis have about the US presence. The rules of engagement instruct US soldiers to bring withering force to bear on positions they're attacked from, even when an insurgent ducks into a private house for cover.

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