Military probe finds 30 civilians killed in Afghan air strike: report

A Pentagon spokesman would neither confirm nor deny the report, saying that the investigation by Brigadier General Michael Callan was not yet finished.The incident has angered the Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai which has charged that 90 civilians were killed in the raid on the village of Azizabad, far more than acknowledged by the U.S. military.An initial military investigation concluded that 30 militants and five to seven civilians were killed in the raid and a subsequent air strike by an AC-130 gunship.Callan, however, concluded that more than 30 civilians, including women and children, were buried under rubble, the Times said, citing an unnamed U.S. military official.He found that the earlier military investigations did not -- or could not -- establish the full extent of the civilian killings, military officials told the Times.Callan and his team were able to review the scene of the attack more extensively, interviewing villagers for the first time, according to the Times.The U.S. military said U.S. special forces and Afghan troops came under fire as they approached what they believed was a Taliban compound, and called for close air support.The military's initial estimates of the dead came from a battlefield review conducted by army Special Forces who conducted a building to building search but made only a limited assessment because they feared retaliation from villagers, according to the Times.Four days later, a U.S. Special Forces major led a team of investigators who visited six burial identified from satellite photographs within a six-mile radius of the village, but found about 18 to 20 freshly dug graves at only one location, the Times said."We were wrong on the number of civilian casualties partly because the initial review was operating under real limitations," the Times quoted a military official as saying. "They were definitely not welcome there."A spokesman for the U.S. Central Command said Lieutenant General Martin Dempsey had not yet signed off on Callans report."There is nothing we can say about the investigation or its finding until its complete," said Major Joe Kloppel, a command spokesman.