The U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan gave his hardest-hitting assessment yet of the present situation in Iraq, saying that life for ordinary Iraqis is now worse than under Saddam Hussein, as the country entered the state of violence that is "much worse" than civil war.

Annan believes that the sectarian violence in Iraq should be caleld a civil war, "given the level of the violence, the level of killing and the way the forces are ranged against each other".

Annan also insisted that the life for an average Iraqi today is much worse than it was under Saddam Hussein.

"If I was an average Iraqi, I would make the same comparison," Annan said, speaking to BBC.

"They had a dictator who was brutal but they had their streets: they could go out, their kids could go to school and come back without a mother or father worrying 'Am I going to see my child again?"

U.S. President George W. Bush still insists the violence in Iraq is "sectarian strife," but much of the international media last week began describing the military conflict and U.S. invasion as a civil war.