General Wolfgang Schneiderhan, the general inspector of the German armed forces, or Bundeswehr, told reporters on Thursday that he had seen a classified NATO report prepared on an airstrike on hijacked trucks and came to the conclusion that the controversial order was "appropriate."

On September 4, Colonel Georg Klein summoned US air support to destroy two fuel tankers which had been hijacked by the Taliban a few kilometers from a German base in northern Afghanistan.

Villagers said that the bombs also killed civilians who were stealing fuel from the trucks which had become stranded in a river bed.

"I see no grounds to doubt that they acted appropriately," Schneiderhan said of the officers involved.

Casualty figures

According to the NATO report, it is no longer possible to determine an exact number of those killed.

Different sources report widely different casualty numbers - between 17 and 142 people. The report says there could have been between 30 and 40 civilians killed or wounded in the incident.

The report was compiled by officers of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan and flown to Germany on Wednesday.

Schneiderhan warned against seeing the incident in isolation, but as one of numerous Taliban attacks on ISAF forces in northern Afghanistan, Klein's area of responsibility. In the past, he said, stolen tankers and trucks had been used by the Taliban in attacks that resulted in many casualties.

There were indications that similar attacks were planned on the German reconstruction team there.

The air attack was controversial in Germany, where the Afghan mission is not popular, and resulted in increased calls to bring German troops home.

jam/Reuters/dpa/AP
Editor: Chuck Penfold