Confirmation of the payouts comes less than two weeks after a US federal judge dismissed charges against five guards of the American private security firm accused of killing the civilians in an unprovoked attack.

"All of the families of the dead agreed, except for one family," said 42-year-old lawyer Hassan Jabbar Salman, who himself was injured in an arm, the chest and legs in the attack.

He said the family of each person killed in the Nisur Square shooting in central Baghdad was offered 100,000 dollars, while those wounded received between 20,000 and 50,000 dollars.

Salman declined to specify how much he was to receive in compensation, which has yet to be deposited in his bank account.

Investigators said shortly after the September 16, 2007, shooting that Salman's car alone was hit with 73 bullets.

"I agreed to drop the civil complaint, but the criminal complaint, US prosecutors are still handling it, and they have invited me to attend the trial," he told AFP, referring to a possible appeal.

Salman said a Blackwater lawyer met in late November with victims' families in Istanbul, where the settlement was reached.

Blackwater, which has since been renamed Xe, took the families' signatures and fingerprints and later also recorded video statements of them accepting the settlement terms, he said.

Since then, however, nine of the families have petitioned the office of Khaled al-Attiya, parliament's deputy speaker, for the deals to be nullified, saying they were forced to accept the deal under pressure.

"We were afraid, we signed the documents under duress," said 45-year-old Mehdi Abdul Khaddhar, a day labourer who lost one of his eyes in the shooting. "We were pressured."

The sole family member who has not accepted a settlement, Haitham al-Rubaie, said he had turned down Blackwater's repeated offers.

"I demand to prosecute them in a criminal court for the disaster they carried out," said the medical doctor, who lost his wife and a son in the shooting. "I've had enough of them underestimating the value of Iraqi blood."

Salman said that Rubaie had demanded 200 million dollars in compensation, while the doctor confirmed he wanted financial compensation but declined to specify a figure.

On December 31, US federal judge Ricardo Urbina dismissed charges against five guards, part of a convoy of armoured vehicles, who stood accused of killing the Iraqi civilians in September 2007 using guns and grenades.

While Iraq says 17 people were killed, the guards were charged with 14 deaths.

Urbina said in his ruling that prosecutors violated the guards' rights by using incriminating statements they had made under immunity during a US State Department probe.

The US government said on Friday it will review the decision.

"We respect the independence of the judiciary. The decision of the judge does not exonerate the defendants or necessarily terminate the proceedings," State Department spokesman PJ Crowley told reporters.

The verdict has provoked a furor in Iraq, with the government saying it was looking at how best to respond but was limited by the US judicial system and a bilateral agreement between Baghdad and Washington.

Salman was sharply critical of both the US legal system and the Iraqi government.

"The American judicial system is not honest, how could they drop charges from people who killed in cold blood?" he asked.

"Where has the Iraqi government been since 2007? Not one official has asked about us, they have not helped us. The US embassy were better than the government," said the lawyer.

The case was among the most sensational seeking to hold Blackwater employees accountable for what was seen as a culture of lawlessness and lack of accountability in the company's Iraq operations.

Blackwater pulled out of Iraq in May after the State Department refused to renew its contracts.

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