Baghdad, Iraq ? American troops killed eight people – four of them women – after taking heavy fire during a raid Wednesday on a suspected terrorist’s house northeast of Baghdad, the U.S. command said.

But relatives of the dead disputed the U.S. account, saying their family had nothing to do with any terrorist group.

Outside the pockmarked house, which relatives said belonged to Mohammed Jassim, bullet casings littered the ground and blood stained the sand. Family members cried and consoled one another as the bodies of the women were taken away.

“This is an ugly criminal act by the U.S. soldiers against Iraqi citizens,” Manal Jassim, who lost her parents and other relatives in the attack, told Associated Press Television News.

Iraq’s major Sunni clerical organization, the Association of Muslim Scholars, condemned the raid as a “terrorist massacre.”

The attack in Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of Baghdad, came as a new poll by the State Department and independent researchers indicated a strong majority of Iraqis want U.S.-led military forces to withdraw immediately from the country. The poll, obtained by The Washington Post, showed, for example, that nearly three-quarters of Baghdad residents would feel safer if the U.S. and other foreign forces left Iraq with 65 percent favoring an immediate pullout.

The top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, told reporters there had been a spike in violence in Baghdad with the onset of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which officially began Monday. Suicide attacks were at their highest level ever, he said without giving figures.

“We are seeing an increase in attacks, as anticipated. The terrorists and illegal armed groups are punching back in an effort to discredit the government of Iraq and more specifically the Baghdad security plan,” Caldwell said. “This has been a tough week.”

He said murders and executions are currently the No. 1 cause of civilian deaths in Baghdad, and operations against sectarian death squads have been stepped up.

Since mid-July, 29 death squad cell leaders and 254 members have been killed or captured, Caldwell said. There were 14 operations in the past week, resulting in two cell leaders and 42 members killed or captured.