Baghdad ? U.S. and Iraqi soldiers found 24 severely malnourished children in a Baghdad orphanage – some tied to their beds and too weak to stand, the U.S. military said Wednesday.

Children in an orphanage in Baghdad are shown in this television image from CBS News. U.S. and Iraqi soldiers recently found 24 severely malnourished children in the orphanage, all boys between the ages of 3 and 15.

Images shown on television showed emaciated children lying on the floor, some of them tied to cribs, of a U.S. soldier holding a bottle of water for one of the boys to drink and of American medics examining the children.

But an Iraqi Cabinet minister whose department is investigating the case criticized publicity surrounding the boys and said news reports were inaccurate.

“We totally reject the tricks they used to manipulate and distort facts and show the Americans as the humanitarian party. That could not be further from the truth,” said Labor and Social Affairs Minister Mahmoud Mohammed al-Radhi.

The minister said the institution in which the boys were housed had saved them from a certain death on the streets of Baghdad. All the boys, he said, were severely handicapped and abandoned by their families. He accused the Americans of staging a photograph of the children.

The story of the orphanage was first reported this week by CBS News, which broadcast pictures of the boys.

The U.S. military said the boys were between the ages of 3 and 15. It said many of the youngsters were found naked in a dark room with no windows. Supplies of food and clothing were found in a nearby storeroom.

Three women, who claimed to be caretakers, and two men, the orphanage director and a guard, were in the building when the soldiers arrived June 10, according to the military statement.

Adel Muhsin, the Iraqi Health Ministry’s inspector general, said arrest warrants were issued for three employees of the orphanage who have gone into hiding. He did not identify the three or say what jobs they held at the facility.

A probe into the case ordered by Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki was under way in tandem with a separate one by the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs, Muhsin told The Associated Press.

Al-Radhi, the Cabinet minister, issued his comments to the independent Sharqiya television station, which is often critical of the government. Both Sharqiya and the pan-Arab daily al-Hayat published pictures of the children.

The military said U.S. medics were called in to treat the children and that Iraqi soldiers notified local council members, who came to help the boys. Ten additional workers have been hired to work with the children, who were transferred to another facility.

The U.S. soldiers were assigned to the 1st Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry Regiment, 82nd Airborne Division based at Fort Bragg, N.C., said division spokesman Maj. Tom Earnhardt. The soldiers were working under the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division in Baghdad, he said.

But al-Rahdi accused the American soldiers of setting up one of the images on Sharqiya that shows at least four of the boys huddled in a small bed. The probe ordered by his ministry, he said, should question the U.S. soldiers involved.

“They are our children not the Americans’,” al-Radhi told state Iraqiya television late Wednesday. “It’s a media fabrication exploited by forces opposed to the government.”