"Cluster munitions are available and they're used by tactical commanders to create a tactical effect on the battlefield," Brigadier General Vincent Brooks told a press briefing here at US Central Command's forward planning base.

He stressed that when they are used, "the conditions for people, the conditions for unintended consequences are taken into account."

But asked about Tuesday's casualties in Hilla, he added: "I don't have any specifics about that particular attack and the explosions that would link it cluster munitions at all."

The spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Baghdad told AFP that the bombings around Hilla were a "horror" that had left dozens of "smashed corpses".

"Our four-member team went to Hilla hospital south of Baghdad, and what it saw there was a horror. There were dozens of smashed corpses," said Roland Huguenin-Benjamin.

He believed the air attacks had left "dozens of dead and 450 injured."

"We're asking about the type of weapons used in these air strikes" on the outskirts of Hilla, an agricultural town 80 kilometres (50 miles) south of Baghdad.

"There were women and children. All of them are civilians, farmers and their families who were on their fields or at home," Huguenin-Benjamin said.

A statement from Central Command on Wednesday said US military authorities were looking into a report of civilian casualties in Hilla, with further information to be released as available.

In a separate development, it said heavy B-52 bombers on Tuesday dropped six CBU-105 armour-busting cluster bombs for the first time to stop an Iraqi tank column from advancing on coalition troops in central Iraq.

SPACE.WIRE