By Luke Baker and Alastair Macdonald
Baghdad - The United States military has said it killed around 40 people in an attack on suspected foreign fighters in Iraq near the Syrian border on Wednesday, but disputed reports the victims were members of a wedding party.
The attack occurred on a day when a US soldier was sentenced to one year in jail for abusing Iraqi prisoners and President George Bush prepared to deliver a keynote speech next week to stem slipping support at home and abroad over Iraq.
"We conducted an operation... against suspected foreign fighters in a safe house. We took ground fire and we returned fire," said Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, top US military spokesperson in Iraq.
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| 'They hit two homes where the wedding was being held and then they levelled the whole village' |
Kimmitt said the attack 25km from the Syrian border had been carried out within the military's rules of engagement and that Syrian passports, satellite communications equipment and a large amount of money had been found afterwards.
Dubai-based Al Arabiya television quoted witnesses as saying US warplanes had bombarded the village of Makr al-Deeb near the Syrian border while families were attending a wedding party, killing 41 people.
Arabiya said casualties included women and children and showed pictures of several shrouded bodies lined up on a dirt road. Men were shown digging graves and lowering bodies, one of a child, into the pits while relatives wept.
"The US planes dropped more than 100 bombs on us," an unidentified man, who said he was from the village, told the television station.
"They hit two homes where the wedding was being held and then they levelled the whole village. No bullets were fired by us, nothing was happening," he said.
| 'The situation will become more violent even after sovereignty' |
The United States, battling to stamp out guerrilla attacks in Iraq, says foreign fighters enter the country from Syria.
Arabiya's report was screened hours after Washington allowed the world's media to witness the first court martial of soldiers accused in a scandal that erupted when pictures were published of naked Iraqi prisoners being abused and sexually humiliated.
Military policeman Jeremy Sivits wept as he confessed he and colleagues abused Iraqi detainees in an affair that has battered Washington's image in the Arab world and could undermine Bush's chances of re-election in November.
Specialist Sivits, 24, who apologised to Iraqis for his conduct, was also expelled from the army as the court imposed the maximum sentence for the charges the reservist faced.
US officials have said the abuses were confined to a small group of guards at the Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, but a top US commander, General John Abizaid, suggested on Wednesday mistreatment was more extensive than previously acknowledged.
Abizaid told a senate hearing in Washington the military had investigated 75 cases of abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan since late 2002.
Bush will use his planned speech next week to counter growing concerns inside and outside his administration that the US-led occupation of Iraq is failing and that he has no strategy to improve the situation.
"A lot of progress has been made already toward that transfer," Bush said on Wednesday. But he added: "I told my cabinet, 'We've got hard work to do'."
He said he expected an interim prime minister, president and other top ministers to be selected in the next two weeks with help from United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.
He is increasingly confident of winning support for a new UN resolution that would recognise the planned interim government, even though details about its make-up and authority have yet to be settled.
Bush would make clear Washington planned to keep its forces in Iraq at the invitation of the interim government, US officials said.
But they said he planned to shift control of the country's oil revenues and the Iraq Development Fund to the new leaders.
"There is some agony about doing it. But given the politics right now and our diminishing claims on Iraqi hearts and minds, we're not going to want to be in the position of holding their money," said a congressional aide, declining to be identified.
Abizaid, head of US Central Command, said the situation in Iraq could become more violent after the June 30 handover, possibly requiring the deployment of more US forces.
"I would predict... that the situation will become more violent even after sovereignty because it will remain unclear what's going to happen between the interim government and elections," said Abizaid.
"So it's possible that we might need more forces."
US-led forces are still battling to put down a weeks-old rebellion by militiamen and supporters loyal to Shi'a cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
Hospital sources said at least eight Iraqis were killed and 14 wounded in renewed fighting in the southern city of Kerbala on Wednesday near one of Shi'a Islam's holiest sites.
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