New video shows US bombed Iraq wedding

The US military has insisted most of the dead were foreign guerrilla fighters who had slipped over the nearby Syrian border. Local people say the Americans massacred wedding guests.

Associated Press Television News said it obtained the footage from a survivor of the strike early on May 19.

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The US military says troops found no signs of a wedding in the wreckage left at the remote hamlet of Mogr al-Deeb. But a spokesman, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, conceded on Saturday that six women were killed in the strike and a celebration may have been taking place: "Bad people have parties too," he said.

The film shows pick-up trucks racing across the desert -- many of the dead came from the regional capital Ramadi -- men dancing in a tent, children playing and a musician playing an electric organ. The same man later appeared dead in a shroud.

Ultimately the truth may count for less than the perception; many Iraqis, exasperated by 14 months of occupation and by a scandal over the abuse of prisoners by US soldiers, find it easy to believe a tale of American brutality or incompetence.

The video is unwelcome news for Washington on a day when it is to present a proposal at the United Nations seeking approval for its continued military presence in Iraq following a handover of sovereignty to an interim government on June 30.

Nor will it help President Bush, who is to make a televised speech to the nation at midnight GMT that will lay out his strategy in Iraq. Bush's chances of re-election in November have suffered as Americans question the cost in lives and dollars of occupying Iraq.