Iraqi government wants US to cede control

Iraq's ruling parties demanded US forces cede control of security yesterday as the government launched an inquiry into a raid on a Shi'ite mosque that ministers said saw "cold blooded" killings by US-led troops.

As Shi'ite militiamen fulminated over Sunday's deaths of 20 or more people in Baghdad, an al Qaeda-led group said it carried out one of the bloodiest Sunni insurgent attacks in months. A suicide bomber killed 40 Iraqi army recruits in northern Iraq.

The Iraqi Defence Ministry said a suicide bomber wearing an explosive belt also wounded 30 at a base near Mosul. After a confusing 24 hours following the bloodshed around Baghdad's Mustafa mosque in which the US military restricted itself to issuing one somewhat opaque statement, US officials distanced themselves from the operation, calling it Iraqi-led.

Officials in Baghdad appeared to wait for input from Washington, underlining the sensitivity of the confrontation between Iraq's Iranian-linked Shi'ite Islamist leaders and the US forces at a time when Washington is pressing them to forge a unity government with minority Sunnis to avert civil war.

A day later, three broad versions of the events that led to the deaths of some 20 - or possibly more - people persisted.

Iraq's Security Minister accused US and Iraqi forces of killing 37 unarmed civilians in the mosque after tying them up.

Residents and police, who put the death toll among the troops' opponents at around 20, spoke of a fierce battle between the soldiers and gunmen from the Mehdi Army militia of Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, whose followers ran the mosque.