BAGHDAD, Iraq: Dead bodies frequently pulled from the River Tigris have dulled the Iraqi capital's appetite for Masqouf, its popular dish of grilled carp, after clerics reportedly warned that the fish dined on rotting corpses.

Scores of corpses turn up every week in Baghdad, victims of unrelenting violence.

Many are dumped in the Tigris, which flows through the heart of the city and was once lined with restaurants specialising in the Masqouf that people loved to eat on a Friday night.

Most riverfront eateries closed long ago, magnets for insurgent bomb attacks that are part of life in Baghdad since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The fishermen who have relied on the Tigris for generations can still be seen casting nets beneath the city's bridges and beside the river's reed beds and sandbars. But these natural fish feeding points also snag floating corpses, and Baghdad's river fishermen know the war has tainted their livelihoods as well.

A fatwa, or religious edict, forbidding Iraqis to eat fish from the Tigris was reported by Iraqi media recently, but tracing its original source has been tricky.

Prominent clerics in the holy southern city of Najaf on Monday denied any knowledge of the edict.