More than 120 people celebrating at an Afghan wedding party - most of them women and children - were feared dead today after an attack by a US B-52 bomber and a Spectre gunship.
The Pentagon insisted that the aircraft attacked a legitimate hostile target but suggested an errant bomb may have caused civilian casualties.
At Bagram air base, US military spokesman Colonel Roger King said an AC-130 gunship, a B-52 bomber and other aircraft joined the attack after coalition ground forces came under fire. He said at least four people who were injured were treated by US forces.
"We understand that there were some civilian casualties in the operation, but we do not yet know how many casualties or how they occurred," Colonel King said. "The United States expresses its deepest sympathies to those who have lost their loved ones."
However, Bismullah, communications chief of Uruzgan province, said the Afghan village of Kakarak, about 175 miles southwest of Kabul, were firing weapons in the air during the wedding - as is common in rural Afghanistan.
He said US planes attacked, killing about 40 people and injuring 70. Noor Mohammed, leader of the neighbouring Gujran district, reported the same casualty figures and said Afghans in the area were "upset because innocent people have died".
In the southern city of Kandahar, where many of the victims were taken, Afghans said the attack began about 2am and lasted for about two hours. A nurse at the Kandahar hospital, Sher Mohammed, said he heard that about 120 people were killed.
Hospital officials said most of the dead and injured were women and children. A six-year-old girl named Paliko was brought to the hospital still wearing her party dress. She was injured, but villagers said all members of her family were killed.
Another injured child, seven-year-old Malika, lost her mother, father, one brother and one sister, according to neighbours who brought her to the hospital.
"We have many children who are injured and who have no family," nurse Mohammed Nadir said. "Their families are gone. The villagers brought these children and they have no parents. Everyone says that their parents are dead."
In Washington, a Pentagon spokesman said a coalition air reconnaissance patrol that was flying over Uruzgan province reported coming under anti-aircraft artillery fire. Other coalition aircraft opened fire on the target.
Meanwhile, a Pentagon official said a B-52 was on a strike mission against a cave complex in Uruzgan - an event that appeared unrelated to the reported anti-aircraft artillery fire. The B-52 may have dropped a bomb that went astray, he said.
In Kandahar, one survivor, Abdul Qayyum, told reporters at the Mir Wais Hospital that after the attack, the Americans came to the area demanding to know "who fired on the helicopters".
"I said 'I don't know' and one of the soldiers wanted to tie my hands but someone said he is an old man and out of the respect they didn't," he said.
The injured also included Haji Mohammed Anwar, who Afghans said was a friend of President Hamid Karzai and one of the first prominent local figures who rose up against the Taliban.
The bombing occurred in the same province where US special forces killed 21 Afghans when they stormed buildings in Khas Uruzgan village on January 23 looking for al-Qaeda and Taliban forces.
The Pentagon later acknowledged that none of those killed were al-Qaeda or Taliban, but Secretary of Defence, Mr Donald Rumsfeld, cleared the Americans of any wrongdoing.
AP