Karzai said that about 40 civilians were killed and 28 wounded Monday after coalition forces in Kandahar province bombarded the village of Shah Wali Kot during a clash with Taliban fighters in the region. Few details about the airstrike were available Wednesday, but Karzai said coalition troops called in the attack on a wedding party in the village as it traveled through the heart of Taliban territory.

Maj. John Redfield, a spokesman for the U.S. military, said U.S. and Afghan officials are investigating the claim. "We're aware of the claims of civilian casualties. In this case, it is uncertain from the facts what exactly happened," Redfield said. "If innocent people were killed in this operation, we apologize and express our condolences to the families and the people of Afghanistan."

Karzai has repeatedly called on NATO and U.S. forces this year to reduce their reliance on airstrikes after several high-profile bombings that resulted in scores of casualties, including a strike in August that U.N. and Afghan officials said killed at least 90 civilians. Under pressure to soothe the public, Karzai has in recent months publicly excoriated Western military forces for their reliance on airstrikes to counter the fierce insurgency that has taken root across the country.

"Our main difficulty is with civilian casualties. We should try to end civilian casualties," Karzai said.

With less than a year before Afghanistan holds presidential elections, Karzai has traveled at least a dozen times this year to villages bombarded by Western forces to offer condolences to survivors.

Two months ago, U.S. Gen. David D. McKiernan, the top NATO commander in Afghanistan, ordered Western commanders to decrease their reliance on airstrikes in battles with insurgents. The directive was issued after the controversial airstrike on Aug. 22 in the western province of Herat.

The bombing in the small village of Azizabad revealed sharp divisions between Karzai's government, NATO command and the U.N. mission in Afghanistan. The United Nations and the Afghan government reported relatively high death tolls from the strike, while the U.S. military said five civilians had been killed. A reinvestigation of the incident by a top general from the U.S. Central Command later concluded that at least 30 civilians had been killed.

The alleged bombing in Shah Wali Kot occurred amid continuing clashes between Western forces and Taliban insurgents in Kandahar. NATO forces have recently focused on targeting Taliban supply lines in the province to cut insurgent routes into Helmand province to the west. Air assaults in Kandahar have been relatively limited in recent weeks. But Afghan and NATO officials confirmed that several civilians were killed after coalition forces called in an air assault during a clash with Taliban forces in the provincial capital of Lashkar Gah in Helmand last month.

Candace Rondeaux 

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U.S. Airstrike Reported to Hit Afghan Wedding

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Tensions between American forces and the Afghan government over civilian casualties from coalition airstrikes spiked again on Wednesday with a report by Afghan officials that a missile from a United States aircraft killed 40 civilians and wounded 28 others at a wedding party in the southern province of Kandahar.

Afghan officials said casualties from the airstrike on Monday included women and children. The United States military command said it was conducting an urgent investigation with the Afghan Interior Ministry. Although the command’s statement made no mention of a missile strike or any death toll, it appeared to acknowledge the possibility that noncombatants had been killed.

“Though facts are unclear at this point, we take very seriously our responsibility to protect the people of Afghanistan and to avoid circumstances where noncombatant civilians are placed at risk,” the command said. “If innocent people were killed in this operation, we apologize and express our condolences to the families and people of Afghanistan.”

The episode in Kandahar followed others this year in which American airstrikes in some of the war’s most hotly contested battle zones killed civilians.

The report of the missile strike, in Shah Wali Kot, a rural district north of the city of Kandahar, prompted a renewed protest from the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, who referred to the episode at a news conference on Wednesday that was called to congratulate Senator Barack Obama on his election victory.

“The fight against terrorism cannot be won by bombardment of our villages,” Mr. Karzai said. “My first demand from the U.S. president, when he takes office, would be to end civilian casualties in Afghanistan and take the war to places where there are terrorist nests and training centers.”

In one of the worst cases of civilian deaths by an American strike this year, an attack aimed at a meeting of Taliban insurgent leaders on Aug. 22 killed at least 33 civilians, according to a Pentagon inquiry. Other investigators said the numbers were much higher. According to an Afghan parliamentary investigation, an airstrike in July in the eastern province of Nangarhar also struck a wedding, killing 47 civilians, including the bride.

An initial American military inquiry into the August attack, in the western province of Herat, said only five to seven civilians had died when an American AC-130 gunship attacked the nighttime Taliban meeting, contradicting Afghan and United Nations reports that said that as many as 90 civilians had died.

The ensuing furor among Afghans, including an angry protest by President Karzai, prompted the top American commander in the country, Gen. David D. McKiernan, to order a second investigation, which raised the civilian death toll to 33.

Gen. McKiernan also ordered a tightening of procedures for launching airstrikes and reporting promptly and accurately on civilian casualties. He has said that minimizing civilian casualties is crucial to turning the worsening tide of the war against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.

Zalmay Ayoby, a spokesman for the governor of Kandahar, said the strike on Monday took place when Taliban and American-led forces were engaged in a firefight near the village of Wegh Bakhtu. He said an airstrike was called in after the Taliban opened fire on a coalition unit, and that a missile struck a compound where a wedding party was being held.

“Unfortunately we should say that an airstrike on a wedding party had killed and injured a huge number of people in Shah Wali Kot,” he said.

Ahmed Wali Karzai, a brother of the Afghan president and leader of the provincial council in Kandahar, said that there were civilian casualties, but that it was unclear how many people had died. He said he had spoken with some people wounded in the attack who had been admitted to Kandahar’s main hospital. They told him that as many as 32 civilians had been admitted, including women and children from the wedding party, he said.

Dr. Qudratullah Hakimi, a doctor at the Mirwais Hospital in Kandahar, said by telephone that the hospital admitted 22 women and 6 children after the attack. The children’s ages were 1 to 11, he said. He said the bride from the wedding party had had an operation and was stable. He said his patients had reported that up to 90 people had been killed or wounded, and that some were buried under the rubble, although this could not be independently confirmed.

In Washington on Wednesday, the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, an advocacy group, urged President-elect Obama to appoint a senior Pentagon official to oversee policies to help avoid civilian casualties.

Sarah Holewinski, the group’s executive director, said the official could “make sure proven techniques to avoid civilians are in place and constantly improved, maintain proper investigative and statistical data on civilian harm in combat zones, and ensure prompt compensation” to civilians unintentionally harmed by U.S. combat operations.

Ms. Holewinski said in a telephone interview that she has been discussing the idea with advisers to Mr. Obama over the past six months. “The issue is important enough to get right, lest we continue to lose public support in Afghanistan,” she said.

ABDUL WAHEED WAFA and MARK MCDONALD