Iraq's government and police said a bomb blast near a soccer field in the city of Ramadi today killed 18 people, mostly children, but the US military said it was unaware of such an attack.
The US military said its soldiers had carried out a controlled explosion in the volatile western city, also near a soccer field, that wounded 30 people, including nine children.
"I can't imagine there would be another attack involving children without our people knowing," said Major Jeff Pool, a spokesman for US forces in western Anbar province. The wounded had cuts and bruises, he said.
The offices of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and President Jalal Talabani both issued statements condemning the blast that they said killed 18 people.
Mr Maliki's office said the dead included 12 children, while Talabani's office said all 18 were children. The US military often carries out controlled explosions in Iraq to destroy captured weapons or unexploded bombs.
Major Pool said the controlled blast in Ramadi was "stronger than we had expected". He said it was carried out in the courtyard of a building where bags of explosives had been found. Windows from a nearby building were blown out, causing the wounds. US forces helped evacuate the wounded, said Major Pool.
Two Iraqi police sources said 18 people had been killed in the blast they described. One, a colonel in Ramadi who declined to be identified, said a suicide bomber detonated a truck bomb. He put the time of the explosion at about 5 p.m.
The controlled US blast was at 5.34pm, Pool said. Tribal leader Hamid Farhan al-Hays from Ramadi, speaking on Iraqiya state television, blamed the blast on Sunni al Qaeda. Sunni tribal elders are involved in an escalating power struggle with al Qaeda for control of Anbar, a vast desert province that is the heart of the Sunni Arab insurgency in Iraq. Ramadi is the capital of Anbar.
A truck bomb near a Sunni mosque in Ramadi killed 52 people on Saturday, a day after the mosque's imam had made a speech criticising al Qaeda, which is entrenched in the area. On Monday, a suicide bomber blew up an ambulance at an Iraqi police station near Ramadi, killing 14 people.
Meanwhile three US soldiers were killed by a roadside bomb on the outskirts of Baghdad today and one more was wounded, the US military said. It also announced the death of another US soldier, killed yesterday by a roadside bomb near Diwaniya, 180 km south of Baghdad. Two more soldiers were wounded by the bomb.