Afghan Officials Decry U.S. Airstrike

Two small groups of U.S. forces, operating with about 300 to 400 Afghan troops, were on the ground at the time on a reconnaissance and surveillance mission, Pace said. But he said the only casualties that came to the immediate attention of the U.S. military teams were four "young people" whose father requested urgent medical assistance for them. The four were flown to a U.S. military hospital near Kandahar.

At least 19 victims, mostly women and children, were taken for treatment to a hospital in Kandahar. They told reporters that an entire family of 25 people had been killed in one village where a wedding was taking place. One wounded girl whose parents died in the attack was brought to the hospital wearing a party dress.

Abdul Qayyum, one of the survivors, told hospital workers that U.S. forces had come to the area after the airstrike and "demanded to know who had fired" at them, according to news service reports. He said they tried to tie his hands, but refrained after other villagers protested that he was an old man.

A group of six U.S. soldiers who had been visiting the injured civilians in Kandahar came under small-arms fire while returning to their base. One of the six was reported wounded in the foot.

It was not clear whether all the casualties reported in Uruzgan could have been inflicted by one source such as the AC-130 gunship. U.S. defense officials have suggested that another possible scenario under consideration is that some people were hurt by antiaircraft fire falling back to the ground.

Officials today ruled out another possible explanation, saying a U.S. bomb could not have caused the reported casualties.

At about the time the gunship was shooting, a B-52 flying in the area was directed by a U.S. ground controller to bomb caves and bunkers suspected of harboring either Taliban or al Qaeda fighters or their weapons caches. The B-52 dropped seven 2,000-pound, satellite-guided GBU-31 bombs.

One of the bombs went astray, but Pace said that a U.S. soldier on the ground saw it slam into an unpopulated hillside, about 3,000 yards short of its intended target.

Monday's attack was the second reported episode of unintended civilian deaths during a U.S. military assault in Uruzgan province. On Jan. 23, U.S. Special Forces stormed the village of Hazar Qadam, where they believed al Qaeda fighters were hiding. Sixteen Afghans were killed in the attack and 27 taken prisoner, but U.S. officials later released the captives and acknowledged that none of the dead or captured had been Taliban or al Qaeda members.

Afghan officials warned villagers to desist from firing guns at weddings while U.S. military operations against Taliban and al Qaeda forces are still being carried out. Such practices have already been stopped in other areas of Afghanistan.

"We ask the people not to fire guns while celebrating weddings in order to avoid misunderstandings and unpleasant incidents in the future," Karzai said after meeting with Lt. Gen. Dan K. McNeill, commander of U.S. combat operations in Afghanistan.

"The Americans control the Afghan skies, and even a slight mistake by an Afghan on the ground can attract the unwanted attention of a U.S. warplane prowling the area," Rahimullah Yusufzai, an Afghan analyst, wrote today in a Pakistani newspaper, the News.

Graham reported from Washington.