UN hands over 'bomb blunder' report

There were widespread casualties in the incident

A United Nations final report on the US airstrike which killed nearly 50 people at an Afghan wedding party in early July has been handed over to the governments in Kabul and Washington.

But the findings will not be released to the public.

According to The Times newspaper, the UN report says there was no corroboration of the US claim that the aircraft that launched the attack had first been targeted from the ground.

The UN probe is said to have found that US troops cleaned the area - removing shrapnel, bullets and traces of blood.

Lakhdar Brahimi, who is UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's special representative in Afghanistan, is expected to give a statement in public later today.

Civilian protection

While the report will remain confidential, a statement from the UN office in Afghanistan said that the findings showed the need to make protection of civilian lives a top priority in the fight against terrorism in the country.

The US said its AC-130 was responding to hostile fire

The US military has denied covering up any evidence relating to the attack.

The Afghan Government says that 48 civilians died and more than 100 others were injured when US planes bombed targets in central Uruzgan Province on 1 July.

The US says that its AC-130 gunship came under direct attack.

At Afghan weddings it is traditional to fire weapons in the air, and it has been suggested that the US might have mistaken this for hostile fire.

Hands 'tied'

The American side said it needed several weeks to collect evidence and make a full report.

But locals say US officials arrived just hours after the raid, taking photographs and filming the scene and the bodies.

The UN investigation is also reported to have found that women at the bomb site had their hands tied.

A spokesman for Afghanistan's foreign ministry said it was premature to judge whether or not there had been a cover-up, as investigations were still ongoing, but warned there should be no cover-up from any side.

He said the Afghan Government was continuing to look into the matter, and that it was taking the allegations that women's hands had been forcibly tied very seriously.