BAGHDAD, Iraq - A U.S. air strike near the Syrian border killed more than 40 people, Iraqi officials said, and while the U.S. military said the target was a suspected safehouse for foreign fighters from Syria, Iraqis said a helicopter had attacked a wedding party.

The attack Wednesday happened about 2:45 a.m. in a desert region near the border with Syria and Jordan, according to Lt. Col. Ziyad al-Jbouri, deputy police chief of Ramadi, the provincial capital about 250 miles to the east. He said 42 to 45 people died, including 15 children and 10 women. Dr. Salah al-Ani, who works at a hospital in Ramadi, put the death toll at 45.

The strike came before American soldiers clashed Wednesday with Shiite militiamen in two cities south of the capital, killing at least eight of them, U.S. officials said. Mortars and rockets fell on widely scattered areas of the Iraqi capital.

U.S. officials reported no American casualties during engagements in the Shiite holy cities of Karbala and Najaf. But assailants with hand grenades killed a U.S. soldier and wounded three in central Baghdad early Thursday, the military said.

Meanwhile, U.S. soldiers and Iraqi police today raided the residence of Iraqi politician Ahmad Chalabi, a member of the Iraqi Governing Council. Aides accused the Americans of holding guns to his head and bullying him over his criticism of plans for next month's transfer of sovereignty.

An official, Qaisar Wotwot, said the operation was linked to Chalabi's recent comments demanding full Iraqi control of oil revenues and security after the June 30 transfer of power.

There was no comment from U.S. authorities, but American officials here have complained privately that Chalabi - a longtime Pentagon favorite - is interfering with a U.S. investigation into allegations that Saddam Hussein's regime skimmed millions in oil revenues during the U.N.-run oil-for-food program.

For years, Chalabi's INC had received hundreds of thousands of dollars every month from the Pentagon, in part for intelligence passed along by exiles about Saddam's purported weapons of mass destruction.

Chalabi has come under criticism since large stockpiles of such weapons were never found.

Associated Press Television News footage from the area near the Syrian border showed a truck containing bloodied bodies, many wrapped in blankets, piled one atop the other. Several were children, one of whom was decapitated. The body of a girl who appeared to be less than 5 years of age lay in a white sheet, her legs riddled with wounds and her dress soaked in blood.

The area, a desolate region populated only by shepherds, is popular with smugglers, including weapons smugglers, and the U.S. military suspects militants use it as a route to slip in from Syria to fight the Americans. It is under constant surveillance by American forces.

Military officials in Washington refused to address the question of whether anyone from a wedding party was among the people killed.

Iraqis interviewed on the videotape said revelers had fired volleys of gunfire into the air in a traditional wedding celebration before the attack took place. American troops have sometimes mistaken celebratory gunfire for hostile fire.

The strike, widely reported in Iraq and the Middle East as an attack on a wedding party, comes at a time when American prestige is under fire as the United States tries to stabilize this country before the June 30 transfer of sovereignty are foundering.

Anti-American sentiment has risen following last month's bloody Marine siege of Fallujah, a Shiite Muslim uprising and the scandal over treatment of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison.