WASHINGTON, April 3: Human rights groups have condemned the United States for using cluster munitions and at the same time charged both Washington and Baghdad with using antipersonnel landmines.

The Human Rights Watch said US forces were using cluster munitions with a very high failure rate, while accusing Iraq of mining a mosque.

Supporting the claim, the International Committee of the Red Cross reported that dozens of people were killed earlier this week by cluster munitions used by US forces in the town of Hilla south of Baghdad.

An ICRC spokesman, Roland Huguenin-Benjamin, said his colleagues saw “dozens of bodies which were completely blown to pieces.” London-based Amnesty International has also criticized the use of cluster bombs.

Reporters who visited Hilla on Wednesday filmed exploded canisters of cluster bombs in one residential district. A 21-minute videotape of the carnage exists and has been seen by other reporters in Baghdad.

Human Rights Watch said two US marines also died in separate incidents on March 27 and 28 when they stepped on unexploded cluster bomblets delivered by artillery in southern Iraq.

US military officials said on Wednesday they were investigating. They say cluster bombs are typically used by the US military on battlefields where there are many dispersed foot soldiers.

But Human Rights Watch insisted that US forces were using artillery projectiles and rockets containing large numbers of sub-munitions or cluster munitions, “thus creating immediate and long-term dangers for civilians and friendly soldiers.”

The group accused the Iraqi government of violating international humanitarian law by storing antipersonnel landmines inside a mosque in in northern Iraq.