Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, however, told visiting Defense Minister William Gates last week that the United States should stop arming Sunnis who may have been part of the insurgency, according to officials in his office, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to release the information. Al-Maliki repeated that challenge in a television interview in Baghdad on Monday.

The fighting in Amarah, the US military said in a statement, was a targeted operation against what the coalition said were members of a "secret cell" that imported deadly armor-piercing weapons made in Iran known as "explosively formed penetrators," or EFPs. The cells were also were suspected of bringing militants from Iraq to Iran for terror training.

A doctor at Amarah's general hospital said 36 bodies had been taken to his facility, though he could not determine how many were militiamen and how many were civilians. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to media.

More than 100 people were injured in the fighting, and at least three of those killed were Iraqi policemen, police and hospital officials said.

Coalition forces came under small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenade attacks during the raids, and called in air support, the US military statement said. The suspects were killed by fire from aircraft, it said, without disclosing whether the forces were American or British.

Iraqi police said the Mahdi Army, the militia commanded by radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, was involved in the clashes, which lasted for about two hours before dawn.

Amarah is the provincial capital of Maysan province, a predominantly Shiite region that borders Iran. Iraqi forces took over control of security from British troops there in April.

The city has seen intense militia fighting, most recently in October 2006, when the Mahdi Army briefly took control of the city and fought prolonged gunbattles with local police. At the time, Amarah's police force was believed to be dominated by a rival militia, the Badr Brigades. More than 30 people were killed in the standoff.

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