Dozens Killed in U.S. Attack Near Syria; Target Disputed

In the aftermath, U.S. soldiers found "numerous weapons," large amounts of Iraqi and Syrian currency, foreign passports and a two-way satellite radio, the statement said. U.S. officials suggested that the village, 16 miles east of the Syrian border, had been a focus of intelligence efforts for some time.

Villagers shown on the television broadcasts said the attack came during a wedding celebration.

Among the first U.S. military decrees following the April 2003 fall of Baghdad was a prohibition on celebratory gunfire, an age-old custom in tribal areas across the Middle East and Central Asia. The sight of tracer bullets streaking through the night sky can lead U.S. forces to believe they are under attack.

But few Iraqis have heeded the rule. Celebratory fire rang out over Baghdad last week after the Iraqi soccer team qualified for the Olympics.

In July 2002, 48 people were killed and more than 100 others were wounded after U.S. warplanes flying over Afghanistan bombed and strafed the village of Miandao and three nearby villages in Uruzgan province during a wedding celebration. U.S. officials, while expressing condolences to the victims, said they were responding to hostile ground fire.

The Associated Press video from Iraq showed about 40 people digging or gathered around a set of dirt graves. A man who wore a white shirt said 26 people from one family were killed and five others were in serious condition.

Several people could be heard shouting anti-American slogans in Arabic. "Those Americans, they don't believe in God, they don't believe in anything," one man said.

Nine people surrounded a wooden coffin covered in cloth, loudly wailing and moaning. A tearful man dressed in white lunged toward the prone body of another man before being pulled away by others.

The body of a boy, who appeared to be 4 or 5 years old, was shown wrapped in a brown blanket, flies buzzing about his head. People around him identified him as Hamza Rikad. "Come here, help us," a man said on the video as they lifted the boy. "Take him by the hand."

"The U.S. planes dropped more than 100 bombs on us," one man, who said he was from the village, told the al-Arabiya satellite television network. "They hit two homes where the wedding was being held and then they leveled the whole village. No bullets were fired by us, nothing was happening."

Staff writer Thomas E. Ricks in Washington contributed to this report.