Iraq, which has issued a proclamation declaring the regional capital Baqubah its capital. In response to a law allowing for the partitioning of Iraq into autonomous regions, members of the Mutayibeen Coalition (Khalf al-Mutayibeen), a coalition of Sunni insurgent groups including Al Qaeda in Iraq, announced the creation of the Islamic State of Iraq encompassing parts of 6 of Iraq's 18 provinces on 15 October 2006. Yet another show of defiance came on 18 October when Sunni fighters brazenly paraded in Ramadi. Similar parades were held two days later in several towns across western Iraq, two of which occurred within two miles of U.S. military bases. By October 2006, small radicalized militias had seemed to overshadow the larger and more organized Sunni groups which had composed the insurgency previously. As disagreements emerged in pre-existing groups for reasons ranging from the rift in the Sunni forces between foreign and Iraqi fighters, competition between Mahdi Army and Badr Brigade, and anger over various decisions such as Muqtada al Sadr's agreement to join the political process, dozens of insurgency groups sprung up across the country, though particularly in Baghdad where the U.S. army has listed 23 active militias. Residents have described the capital as being a patchwork of militia run fiefs. As a result of the insurgency's splintering nature, many established leaders seemed to lose influence. This was particularly illustrated on 19 October, when members of the Mahdi army briefly seized control of Amarah. The attack, while demonstrating the influence of the Madhi army, is believed to have originated as a result of contention between local units of the Madhi army and the allegedly Badr brigade run security forces, and the timing suggested that neither Al Sadr nor his top commanders had known or orchestrated the offensive. At the height of the war, insurgents launched hundreds of attacks each month against Coalition forces. Overtime, insurgency groups moved to more sophisticated methods of attack such as Explosively formed penetrators, and infrared lasers, which cannot be easily jammed. These attacks contributed to the rate of civilian casualties which in turn reduced Iraq's public safety as well as the reliability of infrastructure. As of 29 January 2009 4,235 U.S. soldiers, 178 British soldiers and 139 soldiers from other nations (allied with the coalition) have died in Iraq. 31,834 U.S. soldiers had been wounded. Coalition forces do not usually release death counts. As such, the exact number