Taliban targeted?

Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg told Bild am Sonntag weekly that the officials had withheld crucial information regarding the airstrike on September 4 in Kunduz.

"For that the two gentlemen have taken responsibility," he said.

The two men - the head of Germany's armed forces, General Wolfgang Schneiderhahn and Deputy Defense Minister Peter Wichert - stepped down last month over the affair which has sparked a heated political controversy in Germany.

But Germany's Der Spiegel news magazine and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung refuted the minister's account, reporting that the two officials had given Guttenberg an account of all available reports about the airstrike when he inquired about it.

German officials have said that up to 142 people are believed to have died or been injured in the September 4 airstrike on two tanker trucks in Kunduz that had been captured by the Taliban. Local Afghan leaders have estimated the number of civilian deaths at between 30 and 40.

Taliban, not tanks the target?

The latest controversy comes after media reports on the weekend said the target of the airstrike was a group of Taliban leaders, not a pair of hijacked tanker trucks as originally reported by the German government.

Quoting a secret report from the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) on Saturday, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper reported that Colonel Georg Klein, the German officer who issued the orders for the airstrike, "wanted to attack the people, not the vehicles."

The new revelations have raised pressure on Guttenberg. The 38-year-old from the Christian Social Union (CSU), the Bavarian ally of Chancellor Merkel's conservative party, initially deemed the airstrike "militarily appropriate." But he has since reversed that position, calling it "inappropriate."

Opposition calls for full disclosure

Guttenberg's turnabout has prompted calls from many German politicians for a full disclosure in the affair.

The new allegations that Taliban leaders were directly targeted in the attack have fuelled demands for a full explanation.

"(The fact that humans were targeted) is the essence of the report, which NATO had and which Guttenberg read," Juergen Trittin, head of the Green party parliamentary faction, said on ARD television. Tritten said this amounted to deliberately misleading the public.

Members of Germany's opposition parties have called for a parliamentary committee hearing to further determine the events preceding the airstrike.

Sigmar Gabriel, head of the Social Democratic Party, said the existing explanations offered by the government were insufficient.

"Every day, new and more dramatic information comes to light through the media," he said.

Gabriel also said that Guttenberg should think of resigning over the affair given that his predecessor, Franz Josef Jung was forced to quit after the revelations about airstrike in Kunduz triggered a row over a cover-up.

mz/sp/DPA/AFP

Editor: Sonia Phalnikar