US Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt showed the images at a press conference in Baghdad in response to repeated questions over the incident, in which some media organisations have reported more than 40 people were killed at a wedding.

Kimmitt said US forces which scoured the area of the combined ground and air attack in the western Iraqi desert had found "no evidence of a wedding".

Instead they discovered items such as "terrorist training manuals", military binoculars, foreign passports, medical equipment and possible narcotics, and dormitory-style accommodation for 300 people.

He repeated that the attack on Wednesday was based on intelligence that armed insurgents were gathering in the remote desert near the Syrian border and that US ground forces were fired upon before calling in the air strike.

The Arab satellite news channel Al-Arabiya aired footage of bodies wrapped in blankets and loaded on trucks, and quoted witnesses as saying that aircraft also destroyed other houses apart from the venue of the wedding party.

WAR.WIRE