The 32-year-old knew the danger because he made his living in the streets of Baghdad, earning $3 to $4 a day driving his orange-and-white 1983 Volkswagen Passat. But on July 1, 2003, his infant daughter, Tabarek, had the flu, and he decided to risk driving to his in-laws so he could pick her up and take her to a hospital.

As his taxi neared the working-class Cairo Street neighborhood, American soldiers spread several Humvees across an eight-lane boulevard, preparing to stop oncoming vehicles. Fearing someone would be shot because the makeshift checkpoint had no signs, cones or lights, a man selling kabobs along the road 50 yards away started waving and yelling at unsuspecting motorists.

Al-Ruba'i apparently never got the warning.

Soldiers opened fire with rifles and mounted machine guns, riddling his taxi with bullet holes and killing him, witnesses said. The family filed a civil claim directly with the American military, asking for $2,500, but the claim was denied.

The case is among 4,611 never-before-released civil claims from Iraq - hundreds alleging abuse and misconduct by American military personnel - on a computer database obtained by the Dayton Daily News through the federal Freedom of Information Act. The U.S. Army's tort claims database is the most comprehensive public record released to date of alleged acts against Iraqi civilians by American forces, which do not otherwise systematically track civilian casualties.

The records provide a previously unseen portrait of the toll the war has had on civilians in Iraq, offering hundreds of descriptions of the kinds of incidents that have fueled the growing insurgency and hatred toward the American-led coalition. About 78 percent of the claims are for incidents that occurred after President Bush declared major combat operations over on May 2, 2003.

''When we first got there, the Iraqis were glad to see us. I believe things changed because there was disrespect to the people,'' said Elizabeth Wisdorf of Colorado Springs, Colo., who served for nearly a year in Iraq as a member of the Colorado National Guard's 220th Military Police Company. ''There were a lot of accidents, a lot of deaths.''

At least 16 death claims specifically identify 20 children as victims, most from bombings or shootings, and another 193 claims allege 171 sons or daughters were killed without providing an age.

Incidents such as these have turned many Iraqis, such as the family of Samir Shleman Chaman, against the American occupation. Chaman, a house painter, was killed when a tank crushed his car as he was returning from a painting job - one of at least 150 Iraqis allegedly killed or injured in encounters with military vehicles.

''Our point of view toward the Americans has changed. You can feel the fury inside you,'' said Amir Shleman, Chaman's brother. ''If they treated people like human beings, no one would take up weapons against them.''

Like other Iraqis, Shleman's grieving family became more outraged at how the military handled their claim for compensation.

Chaman was a husband and father of a 7-year-old boy and a 13-year-old girl. The day after he was killed, the family said, soldiers left $2,000 near the pillow of his widow - money the family was told was for funeral expenses.

When they filed a claim through an Iraqi attorney for compensation for the children, they encountered months of delays and confusion before finally receiving a letter on Sept. 7, 2004, denying the claim.

Army Lt. Col. Charlotte Herring said the Army, which handles civil claims for all three services in Iraq, has given out $8.2 million since June 2003 and budgeted $10 million in fiscal year 2005 to help the Iraqi people deal with losses suffered because of the war. Considering the dangerous conditions in Iraq, the system is ''working famously.'' She blamed some of the problems on the realities of war and predicted improvements as hostilities subside.

''It's a way the local commander can try to keep good will and come and amend a somewhat tragic situation,'' said Marine Reserve Capt. Sean Dunn, who worked as a platoon commander and also supervised claims payments in Iraq. ''You're also trying to keep the neighborhood from going nuts and attacking other people.''

Proving whether the claims were valid, he said, often was a difficult and time-consuming job.

Soldiers who served in Iraq said innocent civilians sometimes become victims because soldiers are forced to react to situations without knowing whether they will encounter a roadside bomb, an attacker dressed like a civilian or a motorist who steers into a convoy or absent-mindedly runs through a checkpoint.

Spc. Charles Bradford, 29, earned a Purple Heart for a shrapnel wound and survived two roadside bombs and eight rocket-propelled grenade attacks. He is regularly hit with stones when he rides the ''gunning'' position through the hatch of his Humvee. But he said he has fired his rifle only once since coming to Iraq in March.

''I give these people a chance regardless of the stuff I've been through,'' he said. ''Every day I go out of the [base], I pray I don't have to kill anyone.''

Retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner, a Department of Defense consultant, said the fear, hatred and corresponding acts of violence are by-products of lengthy occupations.

''It feeds on itself because people are angry,'' Gardiner said.

Claims in the Army database seek compensation for at least 437 deaths and 468 injuries.

The actual number of Iraqi casualties, however, is unknown. The database recorded only a portion of the total deaths and injuries because not all alleged acts by American personnel resulted in claims. In addition, difficult conditions in parts of Iraq prevented up to 70 percent of the claims committees there from accessing the database, the Army's Herring said.

Victims and their families filed claims for homes destroyed in bombings, confiscated property, and injuries and deaths from shootings and bombings. In 29 cases, Iraqis claimed the military left so-called ''unexploded ordinance'' that later detonated, killing 14 and injuring 25 innocent people.

The victims in at least six Iraqi claims were allegedly hit by stray warning shots.

Under Section 2 of Coalition Provisional Authority Order Number 17, which remains in effect, coalition forces are immune from civil lawsuits and criminal charges, leaving Iraqis with a single option: filing a claim for compensation with the United States Armed Services, the same entity they are accusing of wrongdoing.

Other countries do not grant such immunity to American soldiers.

After Spc. Christopher McCarthy was convicted of killing bar hostess Kim Sung-hi in Korea in 2000, the victim's family not only got a $154,000 payment from the Army, but also received a civil judgment from the South Korean court.

More than 1,000 claims in Iraq involved vehicle accidents - by far the largest category of claims recorded in the database. At least 160 involved tanks or Bradley Fighting Vehicles damaging cars, resulting in at least seven deaths and 16 injuries. More than 400 claims involved destruction of crops, trees, livestock or water sources - property essential to the survival of Iraqi citizens.

A Daily News analysis of the roughly 4,600 claims in Iraq shows just one in four resulted in some type of payment. Of the 51,018 Army claims filed in other countries during that same period, one in two resulted in a payment.

Herring, the chief of the U.S. Army's Foreign Torts Branch, said in fiscal year 2004 the Army paid 11,000 claims and denied 3,000. Prior to June, however, the Army did not track how many claims were denied, she said.

According to the database, the average payment for a death in Iraq was $3,421, less than 1/20th of the average payment for a claim filed anywhere else.

In addition to the formal claims system in Iraq, Iraqis were sometimes given $2,500 in so-called sympathy payments without any paperwork at all, said attorney Jack Bournazian, who held seminars to show Iraqi attorneys how to file claims.

Attorneys and representatives of human rights groups said the process used in Iraq to settle civil claims is subjective, left to the whim of individual commanders or claims officers and often with very little investigation.

In response to a man who claimed that his two brothers were killed and his parents injured on March 29, 2003, when coalition forces bombed the Al Tajiya area of Babel city, the military wrote: ''Coalition forces dropped ordnance during Operation Iraqi Freedom on legitimate targets. Your family was in an area that was being legitimately targeted and therefore regrettably harmed.''