Karzai pins civilian deaths on US

The US is hunting for Taleban troops in the south and east

Afghanistan's US-backed president has stood by reports that American forces killed 10 civilians in an air raid two weeks ago on an area with Taleban ties.

The US military said at the time that an AC-130 gunship had opened fire on armed militants fleeing a "terrorist compound" in Oruzgan Province.

But Hamid Karzai said on Saturday that an Afghan report showed the dead to be civilians including women and children.

He also asked for the bereaved families to visit him in the capital Kabul.

Denial

A spokesman for the US military said they had received the Afghan report and were studying it.

The US has rejected local reports that civilians had been injured in the raid on the village of Saghatho, in Oruzgan's Charcheno district.

"The investigation is completed and the report has reached me," Mr Karzai told reporters at the presidential palace.

"There are casualties unfortunately... civilians, children and men and women."

A spokesman for the president said the report had not sought to establish whether any militants had also been injured in the operation which took place in a province with strong allegiances to the ousted Taleban regime.

Hunt for militants

Around 11,000 US-led troops are in Afghanistan to search for Taleban and al-Qaeda militants in the south and east.

Afghans say that several thousand civilians have been killed in US-led attacks since the campaign against Taleban forces began.

In early December, six Afghan children died during a US assault in eastern Paktia province.

The next day, nine more died in a field in Ghazni province after a US air attack.