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ISLAMABAD, July 23 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - After the deadly raid on July 1 that has strained ties between Washington and Kabul, U.S. military investigators are to travel to a village in Afghanistan later this week to try to explain why an American AC-130 gunship killed at least 48 civilians in a bombing raid on a wedding party, U.K. daily newspaper, The Guardian, reported.

Records said that about 117 Afghans were injured in another attack on villages near Kakrak in southern Afghanistan earlier this month when U.S. aircraft fired on a wedding party in central Uruzgan province on July 1.

However, U.S. officials refused to apologize for the bombing raid, rejecting such accounts, insisting their planes came under direct attack, claiming that they did not hit a village, but rather, that the bomb hit a deserted area.

In contradicting statements, other U.S. military officials said that a bomb went astray during an air attack that was launched after a coalition reconnaissance mission was fired by anti-aircraft artillery near the village of Tirin Kot, 30 kilometers east of Dherawad.

The attack appeared to trigger the first opposition to the U.S. military from within the Kabul regime and has opened a potentially damaging rift between the president, Hamid Karzai, who is a Pashtun, and the powerful Tajik foreign minister, Abdullah Abdullah.

The Guardian reported that U.S. investigators have started questioning servicemen involved in the operation at a military base in Kandahar. The team will travel next to the targeted villages where they will work “for as long as it takes” to find out what happened on the night of the raid, Colonel Roger King, a U.S. military spokesman, said yesterday.

In his trial to justify the raid the Colonel added, “You can have precision munitions and they may indeed strike exactly where you think they ought to strike from 30,000ft [9,000 meters], but that may not be where you ought to strike when you're three feet away.”

“You may also have, from time to time, less than perfect intelligence upon which you’re acting,” he added.

Shortly after the July 1 attack Karzai summoned U.S. military chiefs to insist that “all necessary measures” were taken to prevent civilian deaths in future.

Karzai urged the United States “to fully stop the repetition of such awkward incidents, and ensure that military operations aimed at finding terrorists do not harm civilians.”

Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah criticized the U.S. bombardment of a wedding party in a remote village as unjustifiable.

Abdullah also called for “strong measures” to avoid further civilian casualties. “It has been a tragic event, a very tragic event, a very regrettable event,” he said.

At the weekend Abdullah said for the first time that Afghan officials wanted a say in the conduct of future raids.

“We have to be given a larger role. If things do not improve, well, I will certainly pray for the Americans and wish them success, but I will no longer be able to take part in this,” the foreign minister told the New York Times.

The New York Times said it had reviewed 11 areas in Afghanistan bombed by U.S. planes and found 400 civilians were killed. Global Exchange, an American organization studying the effects of the military campaign, has drawn up a list of 812 Afghan civilians killed in U.S. air strikes.

At the heart of the problem appears to be an American reliance on often faulty intelligence. In the villages near Kakrak there were at least two engagement parties on the night of the bombing and guests fired their guns into the air in a traditional form of celebration.

Among the dead were 25 relatives of Abdul Malik, a local warlord who fought alongside Karzai after September 11.

Aid workers have also questioned the heavy firepower used in such raids. The AC-130 gunship is often used for devastating saturation night-bombing.

The Guardian reported Monday, July 22, that U.S. air strikes in Afghanistan have killed hundreds of civilians, according to a detailed on-the-ground survey that threatens to embarrass the Bush administration.

The survey into the impact of the war on terrorism, published in the New York Times yesterday, claims that 812 Afghan civilians have died in the strikes.

Conducted by Global Exchange, a respected human rights organization, the survey warns that the number of civilian fatalities could rise as field workers reach remote villages that have been hit.