BAGHDAD, Jan 10: The US military is negligent and callous in dealing with Iraqis seeking compensation for relatives accidentally killed or maimed by US troops , a human rights group said on Saturday.

Occupation Watch, an international group of peace and justice organizations set up to monitor the conduct of occupying forces in Iraq, said the process for Iraqis to make claims was purposely opaque and US treatment of families pursuing claims was often offhand and bordering on the cruel.

"There is a culture of impunity," Occupation Watch's researcher Paola Gasparoli said at a news conference in Baghdad, where many Iraqi families came to push their cases to the media.

"Many of the most important cases cannot be presented or are being rejected for entirely illogical reasons," she said.

After major combat was declared over in Iraq on May 1, the US military said it would hear claims from Iraqis whose family members were killed or wounded in incidents involving US troops as long as they took place in non-combat circumstances.

To be successful, claims also have to refer to incidents that have occurred since May 1 and have to clearly demonstrate that US forces took wrongful action or behaved negligently.

According to Human Rights Watch, the US military had received nearly 5,400 claims as of mid-September, 4,148 of which had been adjudicated and 1,874 denied. The military says it has paid out several million dollars in compensation.

There are no clear figures on how many Iraqi civilians have been killed since the end of major hostilities, but Iraq Body Count, a US-British research group, estimates between 7,900 and 9,800 have died of war-related causes since the invasion.

In a 30-page report covering three months of research, Occupation Watch lists several of the most serious cases among the 77 claims it has followed. None of those claims has so far been successful.-Reuters