BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 7 — More than 1,500 violent deaths were recorded in Baghdad in August, a morgue official said today, making the month less violent than July but undermining earlier reports of a sharper drop in deaths.

The morgue official, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, said 1,535 bodies were processed in August, about the same number as in June and a 17 percent reduction from July. The total of 1,855 bodies in July made it the deadliest month for civilians since the American-led invasion in 2003.

The morgue’s August total conflicts with a sense among many Baghdad residents that death rates had recently ebbed, and it casts doubt on the effectiveness of a four-week American military operation to reduce violence in several of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods. The morgue figures also undermine recent claims by American military officials that Baghdad’s murder rate had plummeted as a result of American-led security operations in western Baghdad.

On Thursday, for instance, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the military’s top spokesman, wrote on a military Web site that since Aug. 7, murders in Baghdad had declined by 52 percent compared with the daily rate in July. But that lower rate does not include dozens, perhaps hundreds, of civilians who died violently in August.