A US coalition force air strike on Sunday killed 47 civilians, including 39 women and children, an Afghan official said today.
Residents and officials had earlier said that 23 people were killed in the eastern province of Nangarhar, when aircraft bombed a convoy bringing a bride to her new husband's village in Nangarhar.
The US military released a statement after the incident saying there were no civilians in the area and that they had been targeting a large group of militants.
"I reject the coalition statement saying that all those killed were militants," the deputy speaker of the upper house, who is heading an investigation, said today. "There aren't any Taliban or al-Qaeda even several kilometres near to where the air strike took place.
An investigation has also opened into a US air strike carried out two days before Sunday's incident in which local officials say 15 civilians were killed.
The issue of civilian casualties is an emotive one in Afghanistan, feeding a common perception international forces do not take enough care when carrying out air strikes, and undermining support for their presence in the country.
The International Committee of the Red Cross on Wednesday called on all sides in the conflict to take more care to avoid harming civilians. Nearly 700 Afghan civilians were killed in the first six months of this year, 255 of them by Afghan government and international troops and the rest by Taliban militants.
Reuters