Baghdad ? U.S. and Iraqi forces killed more than 60 insurgent and militia fighters in intense battles over the weekend, with most of the casualties believed to have been al-Qaida fighters, officials said Sunday.

The U.S. Embassy, meanwhile, joined a broad swath of Iraqi politicians – both Shiite and Sunni – in criticizing a nonbinding U.S. Senate resolution seen here as a recipe for splitting the country along sectarian and ethnic lines.

There were 62 U.S. military deaths in September, the lowest monthly toll since July 2006 when 43 American soldiers were killed, according to a preliminary Associated Press tally.

The Senate resolution, adopted last week, proposed reshaping Iraq according to three sectarian or ethnic territories. It calls for a limited central government with the bulk of power going to the country’s Shiite, Sunni or Kurdish regions, envisioning a power-sharing agreement similar to the one that ended the 1990s war in Bosnia.

In a highly unusual statement, the U.S. Embassy said the resolution would seriously hamper Iraq’s future stability.

“Our goal in Iraq remains the same: a united, democratic, federal Iraq that can govern, defend, and sustain itself,” the unsigned statement said.

“Iraq’s leaders must and will take the lead in determining how to achieve these national aspirations. … attempts to partition or divide Iraq by intimidation, force or other means into three separate states would produce extraordinary suffering and bloodshed,” it said.