Nomadic tribesman Haji Lawang saw the outline of the helicopter in the night sky and heard its roar as it streaked low over his three tents. A moment later, an explosion shook the ground and fire flew up from the desert about a mile away.

The 50-year-old huddled with his two wives, four children, goats and camels and prayed his family wouldn't also be attacked. At dawn, he went out to investigate and found his neighbors' camp in ruins. Five women and four children were dead and six people were wounded, he said.

Lawang ran to the nearby village of Roghani and borrowed a truck. He drove the wounded 120 miles to a hospital in the southern city of Kandahar. Senior Afghan officials there blamed American forces for the attack and said up to 10 nomads had been killed.

The U.S. military in Afghanistan said one of its helicopters attacked a tent the night of Sept. 18 in Naubahar district and killed two Taliban militants, including a commander who had been leading attacks against U.S.-led forces in the province for the past year.

The military initially said it was "highly confident" that only enemy fighters had been killed. Later, it said it was investigating reports of "noncombatant casualties."

The description of the bombing by apparent witnesses highlights the often untold plight of civilians killed or wounded in the U.S.-led war on terror in Afghanistan.

Claims of civilian deaths are common in the battle against Taliban and al-Qaida militants, who have been launching increasingly bold attacks in recent months, raiding police stations, killing aid workers and confronting U.S. troops in growing numbers.

However, most of the reports are nearly impossible to independently verify. The dead are often villagers in remote mountains or deserts. The U.S. military, New York-based Human Rights Watch and London-based Amnesty International said they do not maintain civilian death tolls in Afghanistan.

"Civilian deaths are happening all the time in very remote places in the country and there are no eyes or ears to report on them," said Brad Adams, the Asian director for Human Rights Watch. "We remain convinced that military operations end up causing great numbers of civilian casualties."

The U.S. military said in a statement from Bagram Air Base, north of the capital, Kabul, that it attacked the tent after tracing the satellite telephone of the dead Taliban commander, Mullah Mohammed Gul Niazi.

The military did not respond to questions about the state of the investigation, but spokesman Col. Rodney Davis said: "As always, we do everything possible to avoid harming noncombatants."

Lawang, the nomad, said he did not know if Taliban militants were in the tents at the time of the bombing — although he said he did not see their bodies in the morning.

But he said the people living in the tents were impoverished desert nomads like him who wander the mostly barren countryside looking for pasture for their livestock.

"They were not Taliban. They had nothing to do with politics," Lawang said on a windy desert plain at the scene of the bombing, about three miles from Roghani. "This is a disaster. People said the Americans came here to help us build our country, but they are not. They are killing our people."

He said no U.S. or Afghan official had been to the site of the bombing, where all that remained of the nomads' camp on Wednesday were blood-colored stains on the sand, shredded tents, clothing strewn about and the rotting carcasses of six goats.

Lawang said other nomads at the bombed camp fled into nearby mountains shortly after the attack.

At Mirwais Hospital in Kandahar, 17-year-old Bibi Sara, who was wounded by shrapnel, said the bombing killed her brother, two sisters, her mother, and her father's second wife.

"When the bombs started falling I just fled," she said. "My whole family is dead because of this American bombing." She started crying and said she didn't want to answer any more questions.

Roghani village chief Abdul Khaliq Khan said the dead nomads were buried Friday and that people donated $120 to transport the wounded to Kandahar for medical treatment.

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