Elsewhere in Iraq, a US soldier died of wounds he sustained when Iraqi gunmen attacked an army convoy on Monday near Habbaniyah, west of Baghdad, the US military said, taking the toll in combat in the past seven months to 187.

Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt, the US-led coalition's deputy director of operations in Iraq, said in Baghdad after Sunday's attacks, "There were 54 estimated killed, 22 estimated wounded and one confirmed in detention."

But he admitted the toll for Samarra was based on troop debriefings, saying, "The reports that we have are from initial battlefield reports."

Challenged about what had happened to the bodies of the 54 militants said to have been killed, Kimmitt said: "I would suspect that the enemy would have carried them away and brought them back to where their initial base was."

Asked about reports from senior police and hospital officials in the town of eight civilians killed and dozens more wounded, he insisted: "We have no such reports whether from medical authorities or police.

"We don't have any reports of collateral damage or killing or wounding of innocent civilians. If we get these reports, they will be included in the investigation."

The general acknowledged that the one insurgent now confirmed in custody was a sharp reduction on the 11 claimed captured by the commanding colonel in Samarra earlier in the day.

"Some of those early reports might have been a bit off," he said.

Kimmitt also sought to play down earlier reports that many of the attackers wore the uniforms of the disbanded Saddam Fedayeen militia of the ousted regime.

In Sammara, Captain Andy Deponai said the attacking force had been split into two groups of "anything from 30 to 40 individuals at each bank site".

"They split down to team- and squad-size elements so they could attack from all sides," he said. "They had pre-prepared explosives and improvised explosives on our route which we took into the city."

Colonel Fredrick Rudesheim, commander of the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, vowed to "continue to take the fight to this enemy," slamming as "disinformation" charges by Iraqi police, hospital and municipal officials in Samarra that his troops fired indiscriminately.

Meanwhile, a member of the US-installed Iraqi Governing Council said Monday that he believed ousted leader Saddam Hussein was organising the attacks against US forces and their allies in Iraq.

"Yes, he is behind these attacks," Jalal Talabani, a prominent Kurdish politician who headed the body last month, told France's state-owned France 2 television.

"He is financing them... and is giving these funds to terrorists that he is bringing in from abroad," Talabani charged.