BAGHDAD - Hundreds of Iraqi policemen fell sick from poisoning Sunday at a base in southern Iraq after the evening meal breaking their daily Ramadan fast, and officials said they were investigating whether the poisoning was intentional.

An official with the Environment Ministry said 11 policemen had died. However, the governor of Wasit province - where the poisoning took place - denied any deaths, though he said some of the victims were in critical condition. There was no immediate explanation for the contradictory reports.

Some of the policemen began bleeding from the ears and nose after the meal, said Jassim al-Atwan, an inspector for the Environment Ministry, who was serving as a liaison in the investigation between the Health Ministry and the base, located in the town of Numaniyah.

"Hundreds of soldiers were poisoned after taking food and water in the iftar," Wasit Gov. Hamad al-Latif told the Associated Press, referring to the meal that breaks the sunrise-to-sunset fast during the Islamic holy month. "Investigations are under way to determine the cause."

Samples of the food and water were being tested "to determine the substance in them" and will be sent to Baghdad for further tests, al-Latif said.

Sunni insurgents who have targeted police and military forces with bombings and shootings have not been known to use poisoning as a weapon. But the suddenness and severity of the sickness raised speculation that the incident could be a new attack. The division is mainly made up of Shiites.

Between 600-700 policemen were affected to varying degrees, and 11 who had the heaviest amount of the food had died, al-Atwan told The Associated Press.

Some of the soldiers collapsed as soon as they stood up from them meal, others fell "one after the other" as they headed out to the yard in the base to line up in formation, al-Atwan said.

Troops clash

Meanwhile, U.S. troops engaged in ferocious clashes with militiamen loyal to anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr in southern Iraq on Sunday, ratcheting up tensions between two of the most powerful forces in the country.

The pre-dawn battles in the city of Diwaniyah, where the U.S. military said American and Iraqi forces killed 30 fighters, come amid growing concern by senior U.S. officials that the Iraqi government lacks the political will to tackle the militias and death squads threatening to plunge the country into civil war.

The Mahdi Army, al-Sadr's well-armed militia, accused the U.S. military of trying to provoke an all-out war between the two forces and said only one of its members had been killed and perhaps two wounded.

"The American forces intend to launch a wide-scale operation against the Mahdi Army and will attempt to enter Sadr City," said Abdul Razaq al-Nadawi, the head of al-Sadr's office in Diwaniyah, referring to the Shiite Muslim cleric's stronghold in the capital. "This will have a very dangerous impact on security in Iraq."

In Washington, James A. Baker III, the Republican co-chairman of a bipartisan commission tasked by Congress with assessing U.S. options in Iraq, suggested the panel would recommend a departure from President Bush's calls to "stay the course."

"I think it's fair to say our commission believes that there are alternatives between the stated alternatives, the ones that are out there in the political debate, of 'stay the course' and 'cut and run,' " Baker said in an interview on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos."

The comments by Baker, a former secretary of State and close confidante to the Bush family, are particularly significant because the blue-ribbon panel's findings, expected to be released after the November elections, are expected to carry significant weight with Congress and the president.

Baker flatly rejected the idea of an immediate withdrawal from Iraq, saying, "I think that if we picked up and left right now, that you would see the biggest civil war you've ever seen." He emphasized that the government's biggest challenge is disarming militias.

Bodies discovered

In Baghdad, police reported the discovery of at least 53 bodies dumped across the capital over the past 24 hours. All of the victims had been shot and tortured, and their hands were bound.

The U.S. military announced the deaths of five troops, bringing the American death toll for this month to at least 30. Three Marines assigned to Regimental Combat Team 5 were killed Friday in the western province of Anbar; one soldier was killed by small-arms fire Saturday northwest of Baghdad; and another, assigned to the 3rd Stryker Brigade Combat Team of the 2nd Infantry Division, was killed Saturday by a bomb in northern city of Mosul.

The clashes in Diwaniyah, 80 miles south of Baghdad, began shortly after midnight when an American-Iraqi patrol entering the area to detain a "high-value target" was bombarded by rocket-propelled grenades and small-arms fire, the U.S. military said. At least one M1A2 Abrams tank was destroyed.

The battles, which took place from about 2 a.m. to 8 a.m., did not result in any American or Iraqi Army casualties, according to Mohammed al-Askary, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry. He said reports from local officials indicated 10 militiamen had been killed, though he declined to identify them as members of the Mahdi Army. - The Associated Press and The Washington Post contributed to this report.

Commentary: