A US air strike in Iraq has killed 15 women and children near Lake Tharthar, around 100km northwest of Baghdad.
Six women and nine children were killed in the attack.
In a statement, the US claimed its intelligence reports had indicated that members of al-Qaeda were meeting near the lake and said 19 had been killed.
The killings came as Sunnis prepare to celebrate the Eid al-Fitr holidays, which began at sunset yesterday.
Last month, the US military was accused by Iraqi officials of killing 15 women and children in an air strike in Baghdad and another south of the capital.
According to official UN figures, 88 civilians were killed in air strikes by the US military in the three months between April and June this year.
Accurate figures for the overall civilian death toll in Iraq since the US-led invasion in 2003 have been hard to obtain.
The Iraq Body Count Project states that up to 81,000 civilians have been killed since 2003, basing its figures on confirmed and cross checked media, hospital and police figures.
A number of studies have estimated that the true number may be far higher, with a recent study by British polling agency ORB estimating that 1.2 civilians may have died in the Iraq conflict.
However its figures were extrapolated from a sample of around 1,400 people randomly interviewed by the agency, and remain an estimate rather than an accurate tally.
