KABUL: The U.S.-led NATO force in Afghanistan Monday conceded that several children died during a bombing raid last week in the northeast province where French troops are based.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai had condemned the airstrikes and ordered an investigation after saying that eight children were killed on Feb. 8.

Brigadier General Carsten Jacobson, spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force, said that an ongoing assessment showed that troops engaged “a group of armed men, who were engaging in unusual behavior.”

“This group was engaged by coalition aircraft and that engagement followed all ISAF tactical directives. Following the engagement, additional casualties were discovered and these casualties were young Afghans.

“At this point in our assessment, we can neither confirm nor deny, with reasonable assurance, a direct link to the engagement,” he said.

But Mohammad Tahir Safi, a member of parliament for Kapisa and part of the investigation team dispatched by Karzai, disagreed.

To reporters, he narrated an account in which the local head of Afghan intelligence told a French colonel that the area of the operation was “not a threat,” refusing to countenance an operation.

Safi said French troops raided the homes of two former jihadi commanders before dawn, confiscating “only one mortar round, a shotgun ... some AK rounds and nothing else.”

About 600 meters west of the village, children gathered to start a fire when “all of a sudden a plane dropped one bomb in first round and another bomb later,” he said, showing pictures of bloodied children in shrouds.

“There were eight people and all innocent children and you can see their pictures,” he said. The dead were aged between 6 and 14, with “another guy aged about 18 to 20” who was mentally ill, Safi said.

Jacobson called deaths of innocent people a tragedy but insisted: “We are not certain how this happened.”