The US military has been accused of committing an atrocity in which more than two dozen Iraqi civilians were killed.
The Muslim Clerics Association, the main Sunni Arab religious grouping, accused the United States of being responsible for the deaths in a rural area around Latifiya and Yusufiya, south of Baghdad.
The claim came after the US military said its troops killed 41 people over the preceding two days - all of them insurgents - referred to either as "al-Qaeda associates" or "terrorists".
However, the Muslim Clerics Association, which has often been sharply critical of the occupying forces, said 25 civilians were dead in the US action. "We hold the Iraqi government and the occupiers responsible for this brutal atrocity," he said.
The US military said several women and children were "inadvertently wounded by shrapnel" and treated in the site or evacuated but made no mention of civilians being killed.