At least 26 people have been killed after Iraqi security forces and Sunni Muslim protesters clashed during an anti-government demonstration, according to military sources.
The shootings occurred after the raid of a demonstration camp near Kirkuk, on Tuesday morning.
Iraq's defence ministry said troops responded only after coming under fire from gunmen in the makeshift camp in a public square in Hawija, 100 miles north of the capital Baghdad.
Demonstrators and local officials gave conflicting accounts of the number of casualties, but the defence ministry said 20 people at the camp and three officers had been killed.
At least three military sources put the toll at six troops and 20 demonstrators killed.
"When the armed forces started ... to enforce the law using units of riot control forces they were confronted with heavy fire," the defence ministry said in a statement.
But protest leaders said they were unarmed when security forces stormed in and started shooting during the early morning raid on the camp.
"When special forces raided the square, we were not prepared and we had no weapons, they crushed some of us in their vehicles," said Ahmed Hawija, a student who had been taking part in the demonstrations.
The clashes were the bloodiest since thousands of Sunni Muslims began weekly protests in December in several Iraqi provinces.
Some 13 gunmen died carrying out subsequent revenge attacks on army positions, high-ranking army officers said.
The demonstrators have demanded an end to perceived marginalisation of their minority sect by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's Shi'ite-led government.
A Sunni member of the Iraqi cabinet resigned after the clashes in the north of the country, an official said.
"The minister of education, Mohammed Ali Tamim, resigned from his post after the Iraqi army forces broke into the area of the sit-in in Kirkuk" province, the official from deputy prime minister Saleh al-Mutlak's office said.
"The resignation is final, and there will be no going back."
Since the last US troops left in December 2011, Iraq's government has been mired in crises over how to share power among the Shi'ite, Sunni and ethnic Kurdish parties.
Mr Maliki's critics accuse him of amassing power at their expense.
Many Iraqi Sunnis say they have been sidelined after the US-led 2003 invasion that ousted Sunni strongman Saddam Hussein and allowed the Shi'ite majority to gain power through elections.
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